By Roy Coldwell, Operations Director of leading business improvement specialists, Picme

Mention sustainable manufacturing and the chances are that environmental issues, carbon footprints and sourcing of raw materials spring to mind.  However there is more to sustainability than this, particularly when we consider it from a waste and efficiency perspective. Sustainability must primarily be financial sustainability.  To achieve this every area of the business must be focused on improvement.  Those companies that continually review their processes, examine their waste, and take action to eliminate such waste in a sustainable way will be in the best position to survive the continuous threats to the economy.  Waste takes many forms and can be reduced by some capacity in all areas.  For example you should consider such aspects as raw materials, storage space, duplication of tasks, transportation and overproduction.

Is there another way that a task could be performed to save time and effort; would it reduce transportation time if the layout of a production line were changed?

Are you buying raw materials at a competitive price?  What percentage of your product is ‘right first time’ – are you having to rework due to defects?

Another form of waste concerns inventory - over stocking hides problems and inefficiency, whilst too little inventory risks losing sales. The most efficient and effective way is to adopt a ‘just-in-time’ approach.  This also avoids batching, which can in itself result in delays and affect continuous flow throughout the manufacturing process.
Lean principles when applied correctly across the entire business can greatly improve efficiency and sustainability.  However, let us consider for a moment physical waste products and specifically waste disposal costs, which are continually rising.

One of the best ways to impart a waste efficient mentality throughout the company is through training.  Waste reduction awareness is often targeted at management level because they are the ones looking at the accounts and performance, but the employees nearer the factory floor or in an office based environment might not think in the same way.  They do not see all the costs, so   business improvement thinking and the concept of sustainability must be embedded in the whole organisation.  Indeed, to be sustainable, companies must encourage the total involvement of managers and employees in the adoption of lean processes, or progress will be slow and inefficient.  Implementing lean practices is not about redundancy, but about the quest for engaging everyone in the concept of continuous improvement.

Of course, being energy efficient is a key factor in operating a business which is sustainable, particularly in the current climate.  Again, to achieve maximum energy efficiency, a holistic approach should be taken with representatives from all departments involved.  Different departments all impact on a business’ energy costs. Purchasing will determine the price paid for energy, production for how it is used, engineering for how it is distributed and used, finance to assign financial resources to achieve energy returns from investments and so on.

Once a suitable team has been gathered together, the next step is to start to define and understand where and how your site consumes energy.  This is best achieved by mapping out your energy distribution systems and what is connected to them.  During this process it is important to remember that energy distribution systems themselves consume energy.

From the mapping stage you will have identified points of energy consumption, but now you need to be able to quantify the amounts.  How and why is the energy consumed?  What is the pattern of energy usage at these points?  This data should be delivered by an on-site metering system, which will ideally measure at ten or five minute increments.

Add in other relevant data.  What are the shift patterns you use? When are production lines or units up-and-running and when are they normally idle?  What is the production plan and sales forecast like?  All these factors and more are relevant to holistic energy improvement.  Remember, it is not how much energy you use, but what you make of it.
In a manufacturing or processing environment, companies can make substantial savings through the monitoring of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).  It is easy to consider the deficiencies of OEE in terms of product loss, and therefore lost sales, but the efficiency of the equipment should also be measured in terms of energy usage – notably availability, quality, performance and yield.  You should be looking at how often the equipment is switched on and off (broken equipment still uses energy); whether it is running to its maximum performance at all times – a lower-performing machine still uses the same amount of energy as high performers;  and the quality of the products it creates.  Partly finished products that are thrown away are a waste of energy.  Finally you should be examining whether the process converting the raw material to the finished product is as it should be.

Once you have gathered your data, the next step is to analyse it. Energy is often mistakenly considered as an ‘overhead’ by organisations.  If we take the time to look at patterns in energy consumption, it soon becomes clear that this is rarely, if ever, the case. Start to look for relationships between consumption and some other variable. For example, if your factory is heated, try relating energy consumption (electricity, gas or steam) to degree days/week or even degree days/day.  Degree days are a way of measuring heating requirement against the outside weather.

Other variables to look at include occupation (for example, are people present in the factory?), output and any others that might occur.  Your mapping exercise will highlight the relevant variables to you.  With this modelling and with the mapping, you and your team will now have a ‘current state’ map of your energy consumption.  Along the way you will have learned a lot more about how and why energy is consumed at your site, and you will have the knowledge to begin changing it such that the energy consumption and/or cost of energy per unit of product is reduced.  You can target areas of waste energy use to reduce consumption and also generate a future state map of how energy should be used on site.

It is also worth mentioning that in terms of cost, energy bought during the day is different from energy bought at night; and energy bought at short notice is different from energy bought ahead of time.  This is a very complex area, but what I am saying is that the purchasing strategy used for energy (electricity and gas supplies) can have a significant impact on energy cost.  Add into the mix other variables such as when particular operations are carried out and energy could preferentially be used when it is cheaper.  This could result in an energy cost saving of 10-20%, depending on your contract.

In the current climate every company should be looking inside itself to see what can be done to achieve more with less.  Several small improvements can have a large impact on a company’s sustainability throughout the coming years.  The involvement of multidisciplinary teams, at all levels in the organisation will help to both create the vision of a sustainable future and to create the plan to deliver it. PICME is a member of the BPF’s Business Support Network and has many years of experience helping companies in the polymer and chemical industries improve their performance in a way that it is not only cost effective but is truly sustainable.

If you would like PICME to help your company make lasting improvements to the manufacturing or energy efficiency of your business,
then please contact

CHRIS BAYLISS  
PICME  
Tel: +44 (0) 1926 856634
Mobile: +44 (0) 771 500 8722
Email: chris.bayliss@picme.org 
Web: www.picme.org