Local companies marry environmental responsibility with lean manufacturing
What isn’t going green these days? We’ve got green weddings, green schools and even green automobiles. Why not green manufacturers? It seems like an oxymoron — a freak of nature — but it’s happening. Green is a growing part of the “Lean movement” in which manufacturers attempt to do more with less. In 2004, the Green Suppliers Network (GSN), a joint venture of industry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the national network of Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, offered small businesses a program that worked with the core points of Lean manufacturing with some green thrown in. The GSN offered attractive cost savings to manufacturers including a 4:1 return on investment. The plug was pulled when the program lost its funding.
According to Judy Wlodarczyk, director of environmental and energy services for the Connecticut State Technology Extension Program (ConnSTEP) and former GSN representative, once the subsidy was gone, ConnSTEP worked with the state to develop its own program based on the Green Supplier Network program. The difference is that the new product is a two-day event with implementation and follow-up, something the Green Supplier Network lacked.
In June, Gov. M. Jodi Rell introduced the new training program to boost the “green collar” workforce. Three companies signed on for the blueprint program that would help develop new jobs in emerging industries such as energy efficiency, alternative energy development and production, and other environmentally friendly fields. The state’s resource for Lean and Clean manufacturing procedures, business growth services and quality-management systems, CONNSTEP developed the two-day event that helps companies become more sustainable by prioritizing and implementing green initiatives.
CONNSTEP’s Wlodarczyk
The state’s Department of Labor provided funding to offset half of the cost of the training for up to six small- to mid-sized manufacturers trying to improve profitability and global competitiveness while minimizing their environmental impacts. Companies participating in the training will improve the modern manufacturing skills of their workers through a better understanding of lean and environmentally prudent methodologies.
Uretek of New Haven and Cooper-Atkins Corp. of Middlefield were among the first participants. R.C. Bigelow of Fairfield just wrapped up the assessment part of the program and is now working on implementation.R.C. Bigelow has long known that combining lean manufacturing with green techniques can cut costs, increase productivity, grow and retain jobs, implement sustainable practices and make a company and their products more appealing to the increasingly environmentally conscious marketplace.
Through its SustainabiliTea program, Bigelow has been employing green initiatives for almost 15 years. Bigelow encourages employees to recycle, switch to reusable coffee mugs instead of Styrofoam and even requests that both sides of a piece of paper are used before it is discarded.
“With green initiatives, a company becomes a leaner and more efficient organization,” says Jim Gildea, plant manager for Bigelow’s Fairfield facilities. “There are a number of things you can do to become lean. Employing green initiatives is just one of them.”
Bigelow has done projects as big as an installation of solar panels, to something as modest as installing flow restrictors in sinks. The company has replaced the average light bulb with energy-efficient lights and added motion sensors in all areas — corporate offices, the manufacturing plant and in warehouses. It has installed occupancy sensors on heating and air conditioning equipment, and Bigelow recycles every piece of cardboard, metal and plastic — even stretch wrap.
“One of the neat things about Bigelow is that we were involved with green initiatives well before it became popular,” Gildea says. “In the early 1990s, we replaced all of our lighted exit signs with energy-efficient bulbs. All of these changes make an economic impact. We can save money and make the workplace a better place and more efficient.”
CONNSTEP’s Wlodarczyk works with companies such as Bigelow to help them introduce a holistic, integrated approach to the manufacturing process. Wait a minute…holistic manufacturing? Yes, she believes that clean manufacturing is a vital component of Lean manufacturing.
“We go into a company and train a team on what Lean is and how to look for green opportunities. Then, with a value-stream map, we put it all together,” Wlodarczyk says.
R.C. Bigelow selected six activities — three green and three lean. A schedule review, looking at tea-testing results and tea and corrugate usage, and the recycling process will all be looked at on the green side.
“Then we go back in 30 to 45 days to see what has happened. That fosters the teams to do something,” Wlodarczyk says. “Uretek looked at how the chemicals are handled and stored. They found better ways of doing that and handling the drums that they come in, and the potential savings was huge.”
According to Michael Hansen, Uretek’s chief financial officer, “We’ve identified different areas in the manufacturing process as well as in the general office where we could have lean and green initiatives. We found cost savings in disposing of chemicals by adopting different ways of identifying waste. We found more cost savings in the manufacturing processes than in the office.
“The ‘green’ is the component of the environment and when we look at ‘lean’ we look at what we’re doing and how we may be duplicating work or doing things that we don’t need to be doing,” Hansen adds.
Lean and green don’t always go hand in hand, but they should, says Wlodarczyk.
“I go in to some manufacturers and they are already handling their waste properly and they’ve done an energy audit. We always find things, but companies are getting smart about saving money,” she says.
At Cooper-Atkins, a manufacturer of hand-held temperature instruments, Wlodarczyk and the company’s “green team” took an up-close and personal look at the actual manufacturing process.
Cooper-Atkins General Manager Gary Sawicki says the company looked at electrical usage and reducing waste in circuit-board assembly. He says there was “a mountain of boards that needed to be evaluated and fixed, so we instituted a simple visual system in a rack in the manufacturing area for all to see.”
With a backlog of boards to be looked at, employees were losing sight of what was wrong with the board and taking longer to solve the problem on the manufacturing floor.
“That was attributing to not only dollar waste, but physical waste as well,” says Sawicki. The effort is expected to save Cooper-Atkins about $20,000 annually over the next several years.
“It forces you to dedicate the time and not just have it as something on your to-do list,” explains Sawicki. “Once you set aside having outside people come in, it holds you accountable. What I really like about the new focus on lean and green is that it involves people from across the company, not just the same people whose main job it is to solve these problems. We have people from the manufacturing floor, customer-service representatives and they get involved and get to walk in someone else’s shoes.”
Cooper-Atkins is looking to switch to a variable speed air compressor and hopes an energy savings rebate or two will be forthcoming.
“We understand that we have some dead legs in our system and we’re committing to re-plum those. Sometimes I think we get a little crazy with the turning off the lights — I’ve walked in on meetings held with no lights on,” he jokes. “But it has made us more conscious of energy usage.”
Wlodarczyk says they’re making strides: “These companies that are out there to make products for us to use know they have to make their products more environmentally friendly. Even the chemicals that some companies use are having less and less impact on the environment wherever possible. We’re not talking about a wholesale change across the board — everything you do — let’s look at what we can change to lessen your impact on the environment and lessen the impact of your production.”
A manufacturing marriage of lean and green is not at all new to the state, though it is becoming more common every day.
Curtis Packaging Corp. of Sandy Hook was the first packaging company in North America to become 100-percent carbon neutral, which means the entire operation is run on 100-percent renewable energy. When Donald R. Droppo Jr. took over as president and CEO earlier this year, he decided to focus on a six-year-old program called “Beyond Compliance” and looked at every raw material and operation throughout Curtis, resulting in a plan to eliminate waste. Lighting was replaced throughout the facility and motion detectors, programmable thermostats and waterless urinals were installed.
In a BNH article recognizing Curtis Packaging as an innovator in the green movement in January, Droppo described Curtis as “the fusion of Aston Martin and Patagonia. We are committed to doing our part as good corporate citizens to help the environment. We know that our customers and the community value the significant commitments we’ve made to a safe and secure energy future. In short, it’s the right thing to do.”
Curtis has committed to purchasing enough renewable wind- and hydro-powered energy to cover 100 percent of its energy usage for the next three years.
Rick Mullins, director of the Institute of Technology and Business Development at Central Connecticut State University, says that many companies today are updating their strategic plans, including a goal or objective of achieving sustainability in their operations.
“That means they’re changing their perspective of greening their business and reducing waste,” Mullins says. “The Lean process that we work on with companies does take waste and bottlenecks out of the operation process, where the sustainability process — internal recycling and waste streams for manufacturing or processing materials — all means using products that are environmentally friendly.”
The Institute also trains in the ISO 14000 series of quality standards for manufacturers looking to green their working environment and attain environmental sustainability.
Michael Kuta, managing partner with Productivity Inc., a Lean consulting and training firm based in Shelton, also has an interest in the Lean and Green field: “We are in the enterprise-wide process-improvement business — how to make things better, faster and safer.”
Productivity Inc. has been in business for more than 40 years and over the past 12 months has seen an uptick in interest in greener manufacturing processes. He says it’s “thanks to media attention.”
“What has brought that about is the exposure to the greenhouse effect. It’s become a mantra today. It’s on every CEO’s agenda and it’s initially there because it’s good for their image,” he says.
But it requires execution, not just intent, and it can be complicated since there’s no cookie-cutter standard for removing waste from the manufacturing process.
“As that interest in greening begins to diffuse through an organization, we’re looking at adherence to governmental compliance. So, what we need to do is learn how to leverage the compliance. It’s not easy because of the variation that exists. There’s no consistent standard. It varies by region, by country, by state, by city and it makes it very difficult for a multi-national organization,” Kuta says.
Difficult, but not impossible.
“When you look at productivity and the need to implement a strategy, it comes to the people — leadership and management. All people have technical resources available to them, but absent of a good management system, they can’t execute the plan,” says Kuta.
“The cornerstone of the lean movement is waste elimination,” Kuta says. His company’s clients include Coca-Cola, Kaiser Aluminum, Genentech and BMP Paribas, France’s largest bank.
Organizations should provide a detailed assessment of what they’d like to do and what their expectations are. The process isn’t all negative.
“What are all of the good things they’re doing?” Kuta says. “Too often we look at all the bad things, but when devising a plan, we try to look for all the good things. The question comes: Why we do these things so well, but not others? We’re leveraging the good.”
Simply stated, becoming environmentally friendly lowers your costs because you are reducing the inputs you use. Environmental waste is any unnecessary use of resources — the air, water, land — that’s harmful to health and environment.
“What really makes a difference in the organizations we’ve dealt with is the leadership,” Kuta says. “When a company’s top management team decides to focus on an area — particularly one like this — things get done. Absent of that top management focus, it’s just another program, even with employees with a strong environmental commitment and social responsibility.”
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