Banque de France Invests in Modernisation

Actemium Cournon Engineering is a subsidiary of VINCI Energies, specialising in industrial engineering that accelerates manufacturing integration and control using new technologies. Based 15km from the Banque de France’s printing plant, it was hired to work on five key projects, two in the paper mill and three in the printworks.

Actemium is new to the banknote industry but this dead quarter its’ €13.75 Billion TO; 82,500 employees; 1,800BU’s; 56 countries meant it had significant resources behind it. Actemium in the world has 22,000 staff, 400 Business Units and a turnover of €2.8 Billion.

Paper mill projects

Mould cover automation – it is only in the last ten years that companies have attempted to automate the complex and precise business of creating mould covers.

The complete cycle for each wire mesh can now be completed in eight hours for the Banque de France, with a precision of plus or minus 0.1 millimetres for electrotypes. The maximum size is 1650 x 4425mm.

Sheet tracking – the European Central Bank (ECB) requires paper mills to account for every watermark that they produce. Paper machines operate in famously difficult manufacturing environments with water, moisture, heat, chemicals and natural fibre all brought together at great speed.

Actemium’s solution works across the three-sheet paper machine using three piezzo technology printers to assign unique security EAN and DTM barcodes on each sheet of paper. The parameters met are machine speeds up to 90m per minutes and print accuracy of plus or minus 1mm.

Printwork projects

Unstacking trolley stations (Ergosys) – the requirement was for two incoming trolley stations for two mixed printing batches based on a 600-sheet capacity in two batches. The solution needed to automatically stack out-going wooden separators used in the stack.

Integration of an MES system for traceability – this project required the live collection of production data that could be used for tracing each note through each process at a speed of 10,000 sheets per hour. The performance requirements had to fulfil the ECB’s standards.

The solution was built on a hierarchy based on the factory’s IFS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The next level down was software written by Actemium, called Producim®, to deliver high level traceability. Low level traceability was delivered by Nosco® software designed et developed by Actemium, drawing data from the different machines.

The components of the system were an 8 x 8mm printed datamatrix applied at a rate of three printings per second using inkjet technology, security markup detection, reading of the datamatrix, sheet barcode and OCR reading of the serial number, all controlled by counting and interface software.

Banknote packing area – the Banque de France wanted fully automated finishing during quality inspection, from packing to palletisation, in the context of a factory with six lines of equipment with constant working. The packing area needed to be ECB-compliant with full traceability. The solution also needed to be flexible to accommodate future print line changes.

The start point was the output of an inspection machine. The tasks were divided into four elements of what is described as an Industrial System Integration (ISI): 

• Bundle handling prior to putting in cardboard boxes (ISI PACK)

• Transfer (Secured Mobile Robot)

• Packing cardboard boxes (ISI BOX)

• Palletisation (ISI PAL).

Conveyors move two bundles and position them ready to be shrink wrapped and labelled. This operates at 144 bundles per hour.

The ISIPAK system for bundle handling notes prior to packing in boxes.

The robot is an autonomous intelligent vehicle that can carry up to 30kg in two draws of ten bundles. The control and security of this robot complies with ECB regulations about how it is locked and unlocked, including wifi and optical control of RFID codes. The robot, which is self-charging, moves at 1m per second. A number of robots are controlled by a central management system.

ISI BOX unloads the robot onto a buffer conveyor belt. It then makes the boxes, puts the bundles into a cardboard box, securely seals it and checks that the contents match the data from ISI PACK before adding a label. It works at the rate of one box per minute.

The final part of the process is ISI PAL, which palletises the boxes working on a ‘line’ of six pallets. The content of each pallet is compared with the expected traceability data. Boxes can be stacked up to a height of 2m, adding paper spacers and a wooden lid. It wraps the pallet at the rate of one pallet per hour. After that, strapping, labelling and moving the pallets to the vault are carried out separately.

Communication network – although not a separate project, a secured data storage system is core to all of these projects.

It is unusual for a central bank to contract with a company outside of the industry to work on such a diverse and ambitious set of projects at such a scale and level of complexity. The technical risk and financial cost implied by engaging a new organisation from outside the paper and print industries, let alone from outside the banknote industry, to do this work is significant. The knowledge from Actemium of the fiduciary process combined with their experience in other sectors of activity have enabled us to generate innovation…

The benefit, of course, should be new ideas and cross fertilisation of innovations from other areas.

No doubt Actemium will generate interest from other paper mills and printworks, and it will be interesting to see how others assess the benefits of this approach.

For more information, contact xavier.huchet@actemium.com.