Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 - (Page 9)

How Green Is My Green? E veryone wants to be green. But green comes in shades. As individuals, we all know the quandary: We feel good about taking our bottles to the recycle center, but we wonder whether we negated the environmental benefit by burning petrol to drive them there. So it goes for manufacturers, whose enormous carbon footprints translate into an equally enormous conundrum of what constitutes green practices. Enter capitalism. The question of how green is green is giving rise to a vibrant industry of green metrics. Everyone, it seems, is selling methods to help executives ascertain their company’s environmental friendliness. As Deloitte Touche Vice Chairman Tim Hanley says, “When you get more efficient lighting, you move the meter a little bit. When you change your supply Tim Hanley chain, you move the meter a lot.” Deloitte, which counts Britain’s Dulux paint and chemicals maker AkzoNobel among the world’s top greenies, has developed a benchmark to help companies along. It monitors activity in the supply chain, the workplace, the work force, and in the sales, products, and services sectors, and even includes payback assessments. “Some of these things can move the meter in terms of revenue; some move the meter in terms of operating margin, the efficient use of your assets, and so forth,” Hanley says. In Bristol, England, green metrics were top-of-mind for HewlettPackard’s new senior vice president of research, Prith Banerjee, when Manufacturing Executive met him there earlier this year. “We want to enable our customers to reduce their carbon footprint,” he said. HP Labs in California had just announced a set of green initiatives that included tools to “model, predict, measure, and manage the environmental impact of product manufacturing, supply chains, and business processes.” This is heady stuff that HP claims will even examine the amount of energy used in a product’s lifecycle — “from extraction, manufacturing, shipping, usage, and recycling so that joules will be valued as much as currency.” Meanwhile, German industrial conglomerate Siemens tipped its hat to the green metrics business when it announced in June that it would generate €25 billion worth of environmental sales by 2011. In claiming that those sales will help cut CO2 emissions by about 275 million tons, it said it based its projection on a PricewaterhouseCoopers audit and criteria developed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resource Institutes. It seems everyone is getting in on the game. Aspirin maker Bayer’s technology division is also trying to help measure emissions in the process industries (see “Take Two RFIDs ..” item in this section). Time to get out your green measuring sticks. The question is which one. Perhaps an emerald award to the one that proves itself best. Photo courtesy: Deloitte Thinking Inside the Box nnovation fans — and who would say they are not one? — long ago turned the phrase “think outside the box” into a cliché. So kudos to BMW, which proved that thinking outside the box can mean bringing things back inside the box. Or inside the office, anyway, because that’s where part of the automotive line runs at the company’s Leipzig facility, which produces about 700 specialty cars a day. “They wanted to create an environment where people could get involved in the process without having to travel to the factory floor,” says Lisa Bodell, CEO of U.S innovation consultancy futurethink. “So they built the factory floor around where everyone works.” Before the redesign, office teams “were hearing about problems on the factory floor, but they were so disconnected from it, it didn’t really matter to them,” Bodell says. “Now, when they see that the process stops, everyone knows it because I it’s surrounding them.” Bodell claims that BMW now is “getting ideas on how to improve the process from departments they never would have guessed before.” Good idea, but the massive “transparency” project also cost €1.2 billion. Whoever said you can’t integrate the shop floor with the enterprise? Probably someone with shallow pockets. The Brain in Spain peaking of good ideas, an American company called Terra Technology has brought its brainy method for forecasting demand to Europe. Norwalk, Conn.-based Terra this summer opened an office in Madrid, in part to be close to its biggest customer, Procter & Gamble. Terra deploys sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms that it claims eliminate 50% of all forecasting errors and decrease inventory by 20%. Terra draws data from many sources, including point of sale, the supply chain, and shipping. The company’s impressive technology has helped it earn a slew of awards and distinction over the last year, including a Top 10 Company to Watch honour from ME’s U.S. sister publication, Managing Automation. The company’s customer list features some of the most recognizable consumer goods companies in the United States, including P&G, Campbell Soup, The J.M. Smucker Company, and Ventura Foods. Time will tell whether Terra can take a big bite of the European market or whether it will have to settle for tapas. S Photo: Günay Mutlu September 2008 9

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Opinion By David Humphrey Starters Road Trip Part 1: Innovation or Efficiency? Part 2: The Innovation Gap Opinion By Lisa Bodell Special Report: Great Aspirations Supply Chain: The New Money Machine Product Design: Fruehauf Gets into High Gear with 3D CAD Business Intelligence: Food Distributor Turns Up the Heat on Manufacturers Software: Manufacturers Face SaaS Hurdles Dialogue Opinion By Pierfrancesco Manenti

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

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