Case Study: KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation achieves near-100% uptime for 24/7/365 mill operations with Stratus Technologies

MANUFACTURING ROLLS NON-STOP At Leading North American Paper Company

KapStone Paper and Packaging operates 24/7 paper mills that produce unbleached kraft paper used in packaging and surfaces, with the Charleston mill alone supporting 882,000 tons of annual capacity. After acquiring two mills that ran on nearly 20-year-old MES software, KapStone needed to standardize on a modern sales order processing/MES solution and drastically reduce the risk of costly downtime (about $33,000 per hour, per machine) to keep continuous production.

KapStone deployed MAJIQ Elixir SOP/MES on Stratus ftServer systems with ftScalable storage (Windows Server and SQL Server), integrating PLCs and international-shipping functionality, and completed the project in under 10 months. The fault-tolerant hardware and proactive monitoring deliver nearly 100% availability, support full production capacity, have prevented production-affecting hardware failures, and restored plant management’s confidence in running a 24/7 operation.

KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation

Christophe Deslandes

Chief Information Officer