Targeting for Increased Cash Flow?
Continuous improvement and operational excellence are often marketed as solutions to cope with tightened profitability, but identification and prioritization of actions is the key for efficient improvement.
Based on the broad experience in pulp and paper mill operations, production output is typically reduced due to two main reasons:
- one or multiple departments have what we call “bad production days” that reduce the mill’s output clearly below design capacity on many days of the year. Underlying reason may be old equipment or bad maintenance practices that require attention.
- a single department is a clear bottleneck that restricts a mill to be operated at a certain output level.
The aim of the operational excellence evaluation is to increase the shareholder value by finding solutions to increase the cash flow and profitability of the assets. Mill personnel know how to best operate their mill, but inefficiencies accumulate over the years, that are typically best identified by an objective third party.
Our motto is: “There’s always room for improvement”
Based on large number of studies made by VH team for high-profile clients in the P&P industry, we have identified several cashflow increasing solutions such as technological bottlenecks that restricted higher production output, identified yield losses that resulted in higher than normal consumption of raw materials, all with increasing cash flow impact!
Vision Hunters analytical and pragmatic step-by-step approach targets on operational improvement by debottlenecking pulp and paper mill operations in terms of technological solutions and operational practices as well as looking over the environment and sustainability. Our approach starts with a detailed evaluation of the current state (AS-IS) by analyzing both production data and asset auditing to find production increase potential by focused strategic investments with minimal CAPEX requirements (TO-BE).
What is your TO-BE?
If you would like to discuss more about debottlenecking your pulp/paper mill, please feel free to contact Rasmus Kiihamäki, Consultant at Vision Hunters +358 50 322 3927 rasmus.kiihamaki@visionhunters.com
Vision Hunters provides strategic advisory services for the Forest Industry and Energy sectors. We assist leadership teams in making the smartest strategic choices to improve the outcome of their company in the future. We are highly experienced and results oriented and have advised many of the leading companies in our industry.