Asaleo Care Optimizes Tissue Machine Operations

Asaleo Care, a leading Australasian manufacturer of tissue, personal care, and hygiene products, faced mounting pressure to improve operational efficiency across its tissue machine operations. Tissue paper manufacturing is a high-throughput, continuous process where unplanned downtime, inconsistent machine parameters, and suboptimal control settings translate directly into waste, energy inefficiency, and lost production capacity. As competition in the consumer goods sector intensified, legacy control systems were limiting the ability to fine-tune machine performance in real time, leaving measurable efficiency gains unrealized and constraining the consistency of finished product quality.

Asaleo Care partnered with Rockwell Automation to modernize its tissue machine control architecture. The engagement focused on deploying Rockwell Automation's industrial automation and process optimization platforms — including advanced control and monitoring capabilities — to replace or upgrade aging control infrastructure on the tissue machines. Integration with existing plant systems allowed operational data to be captured and acted upon at the machine level, enabling tighter closed-loop control of key process variables such as speed, tension, and moisture profiles. Rockwell Automation's domain expertise in paper and tissue manufacturing informed the configuration and commissioning approach, helping align the technology deployment with the specific demands of continuous tissue production.

The implementation delivered measurable improvements in tissue machine efficiency and overall production performance. By bringing tighter control to machine operations, Asaleo Care achieved more consistent output and reduced process variability across its manufacturing lines. Key outcomes included:

• Improved machine efficiency across tissue production operations
• Enhanced production consistency, reducing variability in finished product quality
• Modernized control infrastructure providing a foundation for ongoing optimization

The operational changes also gave plant teams better visibility into machine performance, supporting faster identification and resolution of process deviations.

• Start with control infrastructure: Aging control systems are often the primary constraint on tissue machine efficiency — modernization unlocks compounding gains.
• Leverage vendor domain expertise: Rockwell Automation's experience in paper and tissue manufacturing reduced implementation risk and shortened time to value.
• Closed-loop control is foundational: Tighter real-time control of process variables delivers both efficiency and quality improvements simultaneously.
• Continuous manufacturing demands continuous monitoring: Consumer goods manufacturers should prioritize solutions that surface process deviations in real time, not after the fact.
• Platform upgrades compound over time: A modernized control architecture enables future optimization initiatives beyond the initial project scope.