K-C Professional Malaysia Reduced Downtime with a Paper Slitter Rewinder Upgrade

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One of the most critical parts of the paper and tissue production line is the slitter rewinder, a machine that has traditionally required direct operator contact in order to manually set the knives and operate the core handling system.

However, companies often use obsolete systems that are unable to maximize production and are not equipped with adequate safety features. One company that discovered the benefits of an upgrade was Kimberly-Clark Professional Malaysia. It achieved a significant reduction in downtime, as well as greater safety and productivity.

One area of the plant that Kimberly-Clark specifically wanted to work on was the slitting section of its slitter rewinder. The company wanted to achieve certain results; among these, the most critical ones were:

• The improvement of cut precision and knife quality; 
• The reduction of maintenance time of the slitting section;
• The reduction of the cycle time of the core handling system;
• The improvement of the slitting section operators’ safety and the reduction of the hazards around the shaft puller.

After setting these goals, Kimberly-Clark contacted A.Celli to inquire about a new slitting system, and the Italian company was able to provide a technical consultation to further understand K-C’s specific needs.
After the aforementioned assessment, A.Celli’s proposal was to perform a technological upgrade consisting of the most up-to-date knife holders with top of the line material blades and a faster and easier blocking system.

Another significant part of the supply was the new semi-automatic cantilever shaft-puller, which replaced the old manual steel rope shaft-puller. Our solution operates by extracting the expandable reel spool from the jumbo roll and placing it into the core located on the V platform. This is done by a single operator, who uses the mill air pressure hose to manually inflate/deflate the expandable reel spool, eliminating the need to touch the roll or the reel spool.

Once the new paper slitting system was up and running, Kimberly-Clark saw immediate results, which included:

• Better cut quality, particularly on the edges of the finished reels;
• Longer blade life;
• Easier knife holder dismantling and reassembly;
• Significantly quicker core handling and shaft puller cycle time;
• Significantly reduced need for manual operations;
• Increased operators’ safety.

A.Celli’s has four configurations for a slitter rewinder upgrade:

• Manual positioning;
• Manual positioning with a measuring device;
• Automatic positioning web out (SLITTOMATIC®);
• Automatic positioning web in (SLITTOMATIC®).

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