Kemira and Silo AI leverage machine learning to predict and prevent process disturbances and quality issues in paper and board production

The future of the paper production process is data-driven. This can already be seen today in the collaboration between Kemira, the global chemicals company serving customers in the pulp and paper industry, and Silo AI, the largest private AI lab in the Nordics. The two companies are today announcing their collaboration, which has, as a first step, resulted in a predictive AI-driven solution, already being used in board and paper production.

As a result of their collaboration, Kemira and Silo AI have together created an explainable AI solution that predicts and prevents issues with paper and board quality and paper machine runnability. The solution uses machine learning to provide real-time predictions to a status dashboard, giving the operators an at-a-glance view of the current situation as well as hours ahead. These predictions are a part of Kemira’s KemConnect™ Predictive Wet End digital service.

“Our customers are constantly looking for ways to improve their production efficiency and to ensure consistent product quality. Chemistry plays a key role in the stability of the papermaking process. With the help of the machine learning engine built by the AI experts at Silo AI, we were able to turn our chemistry expertise into a new digital service. The service allows our customers to see previously unseen events in the process health that impact the quality of the product, hours into the future. It also helps them to understand where the disturbances are originating from, making it possible to prevent e.g. off-spec production,” says Juha Rintala, Manager, Digital Applications Development at Kemira.

“With Silo AI’s solid background in building production-level AI solutions, we were able to test several options in the pilot phase, and then choose the best performing one to take into production. We look forward to extending the intelligent features of our service with Silo AI even further,” Rintala continues.

“With the industry-leading company Kemira, we’ve been able to fundamentally improve a major step in quality control, bringing it to match the increasing requirements of today’s paper and board producers. The ability to allow human operators to react fast is crucial in the complex nature of chemical processes. We’re proud to contribute with intelligence to Kemira’s KemConnect™ product that both improves the quality of end products as well as the overall production performance,” says Peter Sarlin, CEO at Silo AI.

Would you like to discuss bringing intelligence to your product development? Get in touch with our Business Development Executive Harri Kaukavalta at LinkedIn or via email.