Final report for two industrial visits in Portugal: Visit 1- CIRES Visit 2 - CELBI

Partners involved Marco Reis QUAL Pedro Saraiva QUAL Tony Greenfield Greenfield Reserach

Justification of visits A few relevant items were taken into account regarding the selection of the two industrial visits to be conduced in Portugal:

. We choose industries with economic relevance not only in the region where they are located, but nationally. In these industries, even small improvements can have a significant economic impact, and this makes them interesting targets for the implementation of the best statistical approaches; . To get the most of the visits, we selected two industries with two processes of very different natures: a continuous process and a batch process. We hope to be able to gather the most significant problems both types of industries face, and to analyze them in terms what is common, what is not, and what are the most adequate approaches for each one; . The industries should already have a Product Development or Quality sector, to guarantee that we will speak to people that can easily understand the potential of some approaches we might mention and that could also lead to subsequent short term results. This will also enable us to see and access what is really being done in leading industries in their own markets, in terms of statistical based approaches to quality improvement and control.

Selected industries CIRES, located in Estarreja (Aveiro, Portugal), is a leading producer of PVC in Iberian Peninsula. It leads an industrial and trading group of companies located in Portugal and Spain, with a turnover above EUR 120 million.

CELBI, located in Lavos (Figueira da Foz, Portugal), and belonging to the StoraEnso group, is an important (hardwood) pulp producer. Purpose of the visits The main propose of the visits is to get involved with industry and their problems, opening channels for a fruitful communication to both sides: to ours, because we become aware of the practical problems big industries really face, and therefore become aware of what might be the priority areas where to concentrate R&D efforts; to theirs, because by sharing their problems they either get an immediate feedback of possible suitable approaches to handle them or important clues, or even might engage in localized projects to implement them or develop new ones.

Activities conduced Activities conduced, included:  Selection of target industries;  Preliminary contacts;  Setting the visits agenda;  Preparation of materials for the industrial visit (presentation about ENBIS and proENBIS, workshop materials); Summary of visit 1: CIRES

People involved in the visit: Pedro Gonçalves (Head of product and technology development, CIRES) Marco Reis, Tony Greenfield (proENBIS) Belmiro Duarte, Steven Bacci (invited experts)

Visit description The visit had three distinct parts: 1. First, Eng. Pedro Gonçalves guided the visiting team through the industrial installations, control room, pilot plant and quality control labs, carefully explaining what was going on in each one of them and answering all the questions that we made. 2. In the second phase, in a meeting room, we presented a summary of the “what, who, why, where” of proENBIS and ENBIS, using materials that we have developed for the visits, and stressing the importance of using statistics in practice, providing also examples where that can be applied to CIRES, e.g., design of experiments in the pilot plan trials, multivariate analysis and multivariate statistical process control in the process. 3. Finally, an open discussion took place, where some of the main difficulties of implementing statistical procedures were addressed (lack of data collection and storing systems, lack of training on the use of statistical tools).

Potential future collaborations Eng. Pedro Gonçalves mentioned that soon they will have developed a better data acquisition system, and that will provide an opportunity to apply statistics to process control, improvement and optimization. Summary of visit 2: CELBI

People involved in the visit: Vítor Lucas (process engineer, CELBI) Marco Reis, Tony Greenfield (proENBIS) Belmiro Duarte (invited expert)

Visit description The visit had the following main parts: 1. Eng. Vítor Lucas made a brief description of the main activities of the StoraEnso group, and of the industrial process in CELBI. 2. Then, Eng. Vítor Lucas presented and demonstrated the data collection, storing and retrieving system used at CELBI, that gives an impressive up- dated information profile of the whole plant, every 30 seconds. He talked about the preliminary efforts that have been done to extract knowledge from it (analysis software and some tasks carried out) and was very prone to know more about them, even because he had already some successful experiences. Fortunately, several of us are quite proficient about the adequate tools to use (PLS, PCR, MVA), and immediately some preliminary contacts were established in order to set the ground of future collaborations. 3. Finally, Eng. Vítor Lucas guided the visiting team through the industrial installations and control room, explaining what was going on in each one of them and answering questions we made.

Potential future collaborations There are several areas were collaborations can arise, namely, applying and developing statistical tools to data analysis and training on their use.