Before paper mills had the option of deploying ABB’s Quality Control Systems (QCS), with sensor-laden scanners that measure the qualities of paper as it is produced, people on the shop floor charged with quality control were called “back tenders.” They used to hit the giant spinning reels of paper with sticks and, according to the sound this made, experience told them whether the paper was as dense as it should be. Or they’d hold an arm up to the reel and static electricity would cause the hairs on their skin to stand up to varying degrees – this indicated how much water content was still in the paper.
“Papermaking was very labor-intensive back then, very manually controlled,” says Jim Fisher, who played a key role in the QCS revolution.
The first sensors that formed the basis of ABB QCS for Pulp and Paper were developed in a Columbus, Ohio, garage by brothers Bert and Roy Chope and their friend George Foster. They used radioactive materials to accurately measure the properties of industrial products, such as paper, tire rubber and aluminum during manufacturing. The aim was to enable these industries to produce higher-quality goods at lower costs. Their sensor systems were first sold under the company name Industrial Nucleonics, which they changed in the mid-1970s to AccuRay.
Jim, who is now retired but still works as a consultant, started his career in 1983, as a salesman for AccuRay. At that time, the company was known not only for its cutting-edge sensor technology, but for its workplace culture, which was a magnet for the rookie salesman. “It was performance-oriented and team-based. Managers demanded excellence and rewarded it.”
That culture persisted and grew stronger, says Jim, through a couple of acquisitions of the business that culminated in its purchase by ABB in 1990.
Measurement led to greater efficiencies in quality
By the 1980s, AccuRay’s range had expanded to include some 20 sensors for various material qualities from weight to moisture to chemical content and so on.
“The sensors gave feedback to control systems, and we were able to take those readings and define how to better set up each paper machine,” explains Jim. Actuators were used to adjust variables, such as the openings through which the paper was traveling, and the speed at which product passed through the process.
One 1980s sales pitch began: We can help you make more of a better product at a lower cost. The message hadn’t changed since the 1950s, and it wasn’t hype, assures Jim.
Paper manufacturers that bought AccuRay scanners made better products because they could more closely meet their customers' specifications. “And they could make more money at it because they could optimize the use of raw materials, such as chemicals and fibers,” he says.
Today, these capabilities extend to optimizing water and electricity use, again to lower costs but also to reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.
When QCS was first introduced to the market, some paper companies quickly took it on board, but because it came at a high upfront cost, many businesses were slow to adopt. “We were able to show our customers' customers that the early adopters could produce better paper for them by using our systems,” says Jim. “We used this as a sales technique to all potential customers, saying, ‘This company, our customer, is producing paper that is now favored by your customers.’”
It took great salespeople to sell QCS, but, says Jim, “It’s a heck of a product. It made a huge difference in the paper industry and for us it was exciting to be able to help our customers make greater profits and ensure the livelihoods of people in small towns that depended on those mills for employment.”
The QCS roadshow tours America
At AccuRay, Jim worked his way up to become sales manager. In the late 1980s, just before the company was acquired by ABB, he transferred to Columbus, Ohio, to run marketing for the growing QCS enterprise.
His sales experience had shown him how little time paper mill production managers had for assessing new technologies. It could take three days for them to travel to Columbus for a QCS demonstration and then fly home again. During their absence, they were always worried that if something went wrong at the mill it might be a day or more before they could be back on site.
Jim proposed taking ABB’s demonstrations on the road, and the team, led by Tom Cooper, set up a mini mill on the back of a semi-trailer. Like a rock band, QCS went on tour. Almost every paper mill in the United States wanted to be on its itinerary.
”We’d stop in the mill site car park, host a luncheon at the mill, then everyone would come out to the trailer for a full hands-on demo of all of our products and capabilities,” he recalls. “It was a huge hit. You could see our sales volume go up along the tour route; wherever the truck stopped, it created interest and orders for our business.”
In marketing, he says, “We also built a five-module sales training program, called Orchestrate, that I'm very proud of.” The idea was to take ABB’s very good salespeople, each with their individual style and personality, and help them to become even more effective, and strengthen our sales culture in the process. Among the key skills taught were: how to build relationships with a broad cross-section of people, and how to think strategically, and how to conduct a negotiation in such a way that it is a positive event.
The indisputable importance of trust
He recalls a 1990s marketing slogan that embodied the ABB ethos: A customer becomes a partner when trust is established. “I believe that is absolutely true,” says Jim, who adds that many a time the QCS sales team secured orders at a higher price compared to competitors, not just because the technology was excellent, “but because customers trusted that over the 20-year lifetime of the product if anything went wrong, we would be there to fix it, and be there fast.”
Things do go wrong in the harsh pulp and paper environment, and “once or twice a year, ABB is called to a crisis,” says Jim. “The customer, because the break in production is hurting them so badly, will scream blue murder – and rightly so.” He explains that on a single, typical paper machine, one hour of downtime can cost $100,000 in lost output.
The joy of working on the QCS team, he says, is that everyone is of the same mind, that helping the customers is paramount.
“I distinctly recall one Easter Sunday, sitting in church with my family when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I saw that it was Bob Haag, one of our great service managers, who's still working for the company in the southern USA. There’d been a fire at a mill, so we weren’t responsible, but one of our cross-machine control actuators was damaged beyond repair. There was no question that we needed to do everything we could to get the mill back up and running. I went home and started to help coordinate our response”
Some 30 or 40 other ABB experts from various locations also converged on the stricken mill. “You can’t quickly build a new actuator,” says Jim, instead the team sourced spare parts from around the country and got to work. In just a few weeks, they “created” the vital equipment that would normally have taken nine months or a year to manufacture.
The point is, says Jim, “We all ran towards the problem, ran to help the customer – and that’s a big thing.”
When you find your people…
Relationships brought Jim back to ABB after he spent almost two decades away from the company between the1990 and 2010. He had left “to try something new” and in management roles with other companies he says he always sought to recreate the Accuray/ABB culture.
Friends within ABB, led by Charlie Young, rang him to say there was a position to lead its Pulp and Paper business in the U.S. Says Jim, “You know, they called me at the right time and I subsequently spent another 10 years running the division I’d been so proud to be a part of before.”
On this 75th anniversary of the founding of what has become ABB QCS for Pulp and Paper, he reflects: “I remember when we started scanning in mills, taking measurements while the paper was flowing; the first time that people saw the whole width of the paper broken up into small segments on a monitor, and they could identify exactly where excess moisture and other anomalies were occurring – there were many ‘Aha’ moments.”
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