This study presents a customized root cause analysis approach to investigate the reasons,

provide improvements measures for the cost overruns, and schedule slippage in papermachine-

building projects. The proposed approach is an analytical-survey approach that

uses both actual technical data and experts’ opinions. Various analysis tools are embedded

in the approach including: data collection and clustering, interviews with experts, 5-Whys,

Pareto charts, cause and effect diagram, and critical ratio control charts. The approach was

implemented on seven projects obtained from a leading international paper machine supplier.

As a result, it was found that the main causes behind cost and schedule deviations

are products’ related; including technical accidents in the Press section, damaged parts, design

issues, optimization of the machine and missing parts. Based on the results, prevention

measures were perceived.

Nondestructive and contactless online approaches for detecting defects in polymer films are of significant interest in manufacturing. This paper develops vision-based quality metrics for detecting the defects of width consistency, film edge straightness, and specks in a polymeric film production process. The three metrics are calculated from an online low-cost grayscale camera positioned over the moving film before the final collection roller and can be implemented in real-time to monitor the film manufacturing for process and quality control. The objective metrics are calibrated to correlate with an expert ranking of test samples, and results show that they can be used to detect defects and measure the quality of polymer films with satisfactory accuracy.