2005 Articles

A modest proposal for cleaning up the Kyoto mess.

The Kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 by 141 countries with the intention of reducing carbon dioxide (and other) emissions so that the effects of global warming would be reduced. It called for developed nations to penalize themselves severely so that developing nations could become more developed, but the work required mass consensus. Some significant abstentions occurred and debates raged (and rage). To some extent global financial conditions have overtaken the reasons for abstentions. For example, the cost of crude oil has doubled of late and the cost and lack of supply of steel have risen because of demand from China.

When the costs of fuel and raw materials rise the need to economize also rises and the need for application of the Kyoto accord, although still important, becomes less significant. This does not suggest that the world’s population can ignore global warming, but hints toward a concentration on efficiency in general. Indeed, there are notable adherents of efficient activities who carry out their plans when costs are low as much as when costs are high. Many companies and individuals understand and believe in concepts such as Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma, techniques that can be applied to all production systems.

One of the fundamental tenets of Lean is the reduction of waste in all its forms. Buyers do not expect to subsidize scrap, waste or inefficiency. This is particularly true of mature industries such as electronics. Fledgling industries often have not learned enough about their markets or technologies to operate in the most efficient manner and the need to develop products and markets overrides efficiency. The mobile phone industry is a good example. The early mobile phones appeared at a time when SMT was developing fast but was not the dominant manufacturing method and so some relatively inefficient activities took place in the interest of filling the market with product. Today there is no room for poor quality and thus the mobile phone industry operates to high standards of output and efficiency.

SMT is now the dominant method and it is also stable. It is still developing – in a controlled, less manic way – but, most important, it is being used properly and its users are increasingly taking up of waste reduction programs. Yet the elimination of waste must occur everywhere. It is just as important for a low-volume, high-mix operation to function efficiently. High-volume products generally tend to sell at prices that carry low margins and while the assumption is that low-volume, custom products have the luxury of high margins, this is not often the case.

Some of these costs are obvious. We know that rapid inventory turns and minimal stocks save money, for example, but energy costs need to be monitored and reduced, operational delays of any kind need to be reduced or eliminated and the optimum use of all resources needs to be planned and monitored. Simple things such as turning off equipment that is not needed for a time, laying out logical work flows and never repeating data storage or calculations are less obvious ways to reduct the energy requirements of the factory. Small efficiency drives in thousands of places equate to massive changes in energy consumption and cost. Many figures are bandied about and their accuracy is occasionally suspect, but the emphasis is true: if every household in the U.K. turned off unused televisions, the equivalent of one power plant’s output would not be needed.

This same principle applies to factories, although it is difficult to determine what might be turned off in a 24-hour operation. High-volume plants, in particular, can benefit from the efficient introduction of new products. For example, good data handling systems and MES (manufacturing execution systems) minimize the amount of data circulating; simulations of first-offs can occur offline and cut out much of the repetitive prototyping. All major equipment suppliers now offer optimizing and balancing routines plus data mapping and information outputs to any part of the factory; the trend is to tie these into MES. So, we have an avenue for more efficient data handling.

These same optimizing and balancing routines are also linked to setups and changeovers. It is therefore possible to improve change efficiency and not waste time. Such systems have been available for years but have only recently been adopted.

Any angst felt because because Kyoto has not been universally adopted may, in the end, not matter as much as we think, provided industry and individuals become much more efficient and use resources only when necessary. It would be good to think that good practices in our factories make such agreements redundant.

Peter Grundy is director of P G Engineering (Sussex) Ltd.; peter.grundy2@btinternet.com. His column appears semimonthly.

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