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Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Sustainable Manufacturing

By Bill Lydon - Contributing Editor

ARC Orlando Forum 2009 Focuses on Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Sustainable Manufacturing

Over 450 people attended the ARC winter conference to learn and share experiences, ideas, and methods to achieve Sustainable Manufacturing. The ARC conferences have become a major event for industrial automation professionals to learn, gain insights, and network to share ideas. The initial focus of the Forum was sustainable manufacturing strategies as they relate to environmental performance and resource management. Based on the recent economic downturn, the conference was expanded to address strategies for bottom line business sustainability of process and discrete manufacturing companies. Many of the technologies and approaches that can help today's manufacturers address sustainable manufacturing issues such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, and resource management also allow manufacturing enterprises to reduce manufacturing costs and compliance costs.

Andy Chatha Opens the Conference

In his opening remarks, Andy Chatha, ARC’s President, commented that the manufacturing industries are experiencing unprecedented volatility, uncertainty, lack of credit, and lack of demand. According to Andy, automation companies appear to be doing better than most, largely because automation is a project-driven industry, and there are still projects in the pipeline. The electric power industry is another bright spot, since the need for power continues to grow.

"...there is a tension between 'sustainable manufacturing' and survival."

After listening to the sessions and side discussions with attendees, I conclude that there is tension between "sustainable manufacturing" and survival. Due to lower profits and limited access to capital, many companies must focus on quick payback investments that require minimal capital investment.

Top Ten Manufacturing Technology Trends

Andy presented what ARC believes are the top ten technology trends in manufacturing, many of which represent key enablers for both business and environmental sustainability.

Automation business is still growing in developing countries.
Automation companies are becoming Main Automation Contractors (MACs) by providing more services to help companies fill in personnel gaps.
Discrete automation companies are aggressively pursuing the process business. Generally suppliers are broadening product portfolios and providing customers more choices.
All major automation companies are now offering Operations Management Platforms.
Wireless technology is injecting a new life into sensors and automation systems to monitor and control more.
Integrated automation and power systems are emerging.
Plant to Business (P2B) connectivity is a must to have an efficient business.
Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) has become a top priority for asset-intensive process industries
Virtual Servers, Virtual Commissioning, Virtual Machine, Virtual Plant are ready to go mainstream.
Integrated Automation & PLM/ALM Systems are on the horizon.

Andy further commented that there has been significant consolidation of enterprise software vendors.

Andy's Ten Ideas to Cut Costs

Negotiate better relationships with suppliers.
Adopt technology platforms to simplify architecture.
Standardize across all plants as much as possible.
Use wireless field devices.
Use virtual servers for software applications.
Use Virtual Commissioning for new projects.
Improve Asset Life Cycle Performance with better Asset Information Management (Virtual Plant)
Outsource non-core operations
Upgrade high-maintenance legacy systems
Benchmark for continuous improvement

In his concluding remarks, Andy suggested there are factors that will enable the US economy to emerge stronger from the economic down turn:

The World Economic Forum now ranks the U.S. number 1 on the Global Competitive Index.
U.S. political leaders are becoming motivated to create more manufacturing jobs through infrastructure spending.
U.S. companies have superior supply chain and logistics management capabilities.
PLM and Virtual Plant are now available to help manufacturing companies become more competitive.
Current business environment is creating opportunities for U.S. manufacturers.
Most companies are no longer planning to move production to China or other low cost countries.
Many companies are planning investment in new plants here in the U.S. or Mexico.
The U.S. "innovation machine" is at work creating lower cost products & processes.

View from the EPA: Sustainability Makes Good Business Sense

Dr. Alan D. Hecht, Sustainability Director at the US Environmental Protection Agency, explained that people have gotten the message that environmental sustainability is important; now the challenge to make it operational. Dr. Hecht described how a regulating agency promotes sustainability:

Mandate: Regulations, directives, standards, Executive Orders (“Leading by Example”)
Facilitate: Policy, education, measure and inform (EPA Draft Report on the Environment)
Partner: Joint ventures, collaborative problem solving (EPA Performance Track, Design for Environment, Climate Partnerships, Cooperative Conservation)
Endorse: Rewards and recognition (President’s Green Chemistry Award, Malcolm Baldridge Award)

"...businesses need to understand that not achieving sustainably significantly increases risk."

Dr. Hecht cited a Swiss sustainably report from 2004 that stated, “Unsustainable development increasingly needs to be understood as having the potential to substantially change the risk landscape.” He emphasize that businesses need to understand that not achieving sustainably significantly increases risk.

According to Dr. Hecht, the EPA's role in promoting sustainable manufacturing and making it operational is to mandate and regulate, facilitate, partner, and endorse appropriate practices. Dr. Hecht cited a partnership with Dow Chemical as one example of how the EPA and private industry can work together to help make sustainable manufacturing operational. Dr. Hecht concluded his presentation by encouraging Forum participants to obtain a copy of the EPA's "Manufacturing for the Future" booklet, available from the EPA website, and reminded Forum participants that they can all contribute to making sustainability operational by adopting green business strategies.

He believes the present economic situation is, “further incentive to move towards the convergence...we have to get through the current crisis but it is not going to push us backward in terms of our goals towards sustainability...”

Cisco's Best Practices for Sustainability

Angel Mendez, Senior Vice President of Customer Value Chain Management at Cisco Systems, shared Cisco’s definition of sustainability:

“To meet the needs of the present while not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

Angel told the audience that at C sustainability is a unifying topic; one that brings competitors together to develop and implement best practices. Cisco is building sustainability into everything the company does. It has developed seven key best practices intended to make sustainability operational throughout this large global company. Mr. Mendez recommends making sustainability everyone's responsibility, share ideas; and finally, don't just "comply;" be a leader.

Angel outlined seven sustainability best practices:

Deploy collaboration technologies
Establish governance for internal alignment
Take a holistic view - sourcing, manufacturing, and sales
Identify key impactors – environmental, social, etc.
Align the strategy externally
Create an action plan
Set metrics and process parameters

BASF's Three Pillars for Energy Efficiency

Franz-Joseph Kersting, European Automation Coordination Team Director at BASF, provided a European perspective where they must meet binding goals. The European climate policy focuses on across-the-board reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, increased use of renewable energy sources, and increased energy savings in energy consumption to be achieved by the year 2020. As a result BASF has placed a major focus on increasing energy efficiency across its global manufacturing operations.

According to Kersting, BASF's "three pillars" for increasing energy efficiency are the verbund, modern power plants, and energy efficient processes. Verbund is a German word meaning "linked" or "integrated" to the maximum degree. This is really a holistic view of an entire plant.

BASF has long been recognized for making the most of its integrated approach to manufacturing, research and its overall management philosophy. BASF's specific goals include reducing emissions of specific greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020 (compared with 2002) and increasing energy efficiencies in production by 25 percent by 2020 (compared with 2002).

Kersting described the company's use of a modern combined cycle gas turbine power plants, and energy-efficient processes as examples. He explained that both process control and electrical engineering contribute to increased energy efficiency at BASF to help improve both environmental and business performance. He provided examples of how improved process control can contribute to reduced energy consumption. BASF has implemented a site-wide steam network (including the company's power plants), enabling heat recovery within the plants (e.g., in thermal separation and reactors). This required some apparatus innovation (such as divided wall columns and reactive distillation), and is supported by automated start-ups and shutdowns, plant wide control and coordination of optimization and process automation, and a higher degree of automation for more complex processes.

In his concluding comments, Kersting explained that, to achieve maximum energy efficiency, it's important to focus on the total cost of ownership (TCO) across process development, engineering, and operations.

ARC Conference Sessions

This is a list of all the conference sessions:

Automation.com Real-time Information for the Automation Professional Feb. 09, 2010

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