Diary as dialogue in papermill process control

This form of coordination provides an alternative to workflow in situations where efficiency depends on discretion with respect to priorities—the ability not to respond when there are other things to do. The usefulness of the e-diary on the factory floor led to its informal diffusion to more than 100 workers, including managers. Papermills are tremendously expensive, extremely noisy, mind-blowingly complicated, and each one is unique in the way it’s structured. Paper and papermills are a cornerstone of the Finnish economy. Let us expand the description. Size varies, and production lines can be as long as 500 feet, especially if the workspace includes the paper rolls. Paper rolls are up to 30 feet wide and 20 feet high. It takes time to walk around them; other workers are often out of sight. Company capital is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. Shift work, divided into 24-hour production, is needed to repay investment. Downtime cost can be $20,000 per hour so there is a major incentive to keep the machine running at all times. It is cost-effective to wait for breakdowns, rather than stop the lines for regular servicing. Days are divided into three shifts. The usual pattern for each worker is three morning shifts, three day shifts, three night shifts, then five days off. Noise, sheer size, and difficulty in seeing others limit communication between workers on the same shift. Noise is partly a result of the dramatic speed of production. A 16-foot-wide stream of paper runs through the machine at 4,250 feet per minute or about 50 mph. Speeds on the newest machines can be as fast as 8,200 feet per minute. Paper breaks, the main topic of [1], can be correspondingly dramatic. The paper on the machine is a torrent of sludge with decreasing degrees of thickness and wetness. Holes and other defects can start to appear in the paperstream, and fast actions are necessary to prevent a possible loss of control. Papermills are fundamentally a set of interlinked machines using bearings, rods, connectors, pumps, gaskets, cylinders, drive belts, and so forth, that make up most mechanical devices of this size (see Figure 1). The most important element—the conveyor belt that carries the paperstream—is termed “the wire.” In addition, much of the machine is controlled, monitored, calibrated, and adjusted by a Mike Robinson, Mikko Kovalainen, and Esa Auramäki