Rieter

The necessity

Index

Running high-tech spinning plants without the requisite technological knowledge is not possible, but it is also not possible without the required management expertise. In addition to many other subjects, this expertise includes the ability to ensure constant, long-term product quality.

One tool for ensuring virtually total process security is the  Mill Information System (MIS). Besides ensuring quality, this also has a very important second advantage, namely considerably reducing production costs by:

  • enabling the precisely required quality to be produced;
  • optimizing raw material utilization;
  • increasing productivity;
  • improving personnel efficiency.

The wrong tool for high-tech spinning plants in respect to quality is the time-honored “Statistical Quality Control Office”. By the time it is able to react to faults in production, enormous damage has occurred because high-performance machines such as cards, drawframes, etc., produce huge amounts of intermediate products within a very short time. This can be illustrated by a simple example: in only one minute, a drawframe operating at a speed of 800 m/min produces sliver for about 55 to 60 cops of yarn, sufficient to manufacture 25 shirts. The volume of rejects if anything goes wrong at any production unit in the mill is equally high. More than ever the following slogan is valid:

"FAULTS SHOULD BE AVOIDED, NOT CORRECTED"

Meeting this requirement calls not only for competent quality management, but also for an overall control, monitoring and information system with control devices at all relevant points of the material through-flow, either individual or group-wise.

The system has to start at the point where the first intermediate product is created, and has to continue to the end of the process, i.e. to start at the process infeed of the card, and to end at the winding machines. As sensors are installed nowadays in any case at all important points on nearly all machines, it makes sense to equip these control units additionally with data collecting and data evaluating systems in order to have the necessary tools not only for quality management, but also for mill management. Fortunately, systems referred to as “Mill Information Systems” to control the process in terms of both quality and economy are now available from some machine manufacturers, one of which is the Rieter Company. The advantage of the Rieter system ( SPIDERweb) is that it controls the entire mill from the blowroom to the winder, whereas many other systems control only specific machine groups.