HPC North Quality Defects

AST Teammates,


We had a pretty frustrating conference call yesterday with HPC-North regarding the quality of the basesheet we are shipping to them. They are experiencing holes in the basesheet which are causing web breaks like they’ve never seen particularly with the paper we manufactured early in the month.

Scott, Ken, Don Brown and I have been reviewing the dry end physical data since the call ended yesterday afternoon into the early evening and again this morning following our morning meeting.

We are currently scrutinizing the data from both September to understand machine conditions that produced paper which ran well and more so the tons produced in October to understand true cause of the issues we have been experiencing with runnability at HPC-North.
Not one of us enjoyed hearing our quality was unacceptable yesterday. I am sure you are not pleased to be reading about AST's quality failure as we have all been sharply focused on providing a product that just gets better and better over the past year.
Mark’s grave concern is,  knowing that the operators and the quality testers inspect nearly two to four hundred feet of every roll,  that we are not catching the holes he and his operators are seeing on the napkin folder back stands in Green Bay.
To reiterate the expectations on Gr 314 or any other grade we are running:
If there are holes in the sheet the expectation is that operators attack the elimination of the defect using any/all of several actions not necessarily in the order listed:
                          - chemically cleaning the fabrics,
                          - pressure washing the felt or forming fabric
                          - dumping stock suspected of contamination
                          - adding fresh water to flush contaminants out of the system
                          - draining and filling the white water chest
                          - changing fabrics if necessary
                          - adjsuting coating and release flows
                          - changing crepe blades/cleaning baldes
                          - any other action deemed appropriate

relentlessly until the defect is eliminated.
For two days last week we held every roll coming off the machine during the stickies outbreak and did not release any rolls that we had even the slightest suspicion would not meet quality expectations.
HPC-North has been identifying issues with holes for the past month or so and they, as our customer, have not seen any relief. We must take the expressed concerns and quality complaints VERY seriously and make them our immediate concerns as well.

Continue to diligently work to eliminate the defects you identify as you identify them.
Do not wait to address them at a convenient time.
We have an excellent biological program in place but we must all be constantly looking everywhere on the machine for possible sources of holes when we see them (stock falls, biological growth, drips, etc.) as well as sources of contamination that may be coming in with the furnish.
Based on the condition of the 9.2# sheet we are running presently we believe the system is about as clean as it can get. However , we cannot allow ourselves to drift into complacency

Think Safety..... Work Safely

Mike Sherbak