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Pinpointing waste helps companies save money
(The Edmond Sun, Okla. Via
Acquire Media NewsEdge) Mar. 21--EDMOND -- Environmental
sustainability will not succeed without business and industry, said
Dianne Wilkins, Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality
pollution prevention program manager.
Wilkins spoke Friday morning at the eighth annual conference
of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network presented at the University
of Central Oklahoma. Several presentations were offered during the
event, including how officials and residents in Greensburg, Kan.,
have rebuilt using green initiatives after their town was destroyed
by a tornado.
Lean manufacturing makes business by saving
money and environmental sense by saving time, increasing
productivity and reducing wasteful pollution, said Kurt Middelkoop
of the University of Texas at Arlington. He works with the Texas
Manufacturing Assistance Center in partnership with the U.S.
Department of Commerce. Its function is to assist manufacturers in
the state to become more competitive.
"Pollution prevention
is a way of looking at things differently; it's a paradigm shift,"
Wilkins said. "And you look at not just managing waste but looking
at the source of your waste and trying to figure out how to reduce
it," Wilkins said.
Not having to recycle by not generating
waste is the point of pollution prevention, Middelkoop said. Not
having to generate waste leads to using a green product instead of a
non-green product, he said. This could be a water-base solvent
instead of a chemical-base solvent, he continued.
"What we're
teaching manufacturers is that when you make money, if you're going
to be here 10 years from now, you have to be addressing
environmental issues," Middelkoop said.
He said if
manufacturers are not lean if they don't see their product flowing
from the beginning of the process. Manufactured materials should be
shipped out and not stored, Middelkoop said.
"That's the
whole model of people like Toyota. They bring things in. It's all
about timing so things flow," he said. This applies to any type of
business, Wilkins added.
People who teach lean opportunities
across the U.S. are being taught about environmental opportunities,
he said. Manufacturers have historically not focused on their
lighting and facility's air conditioning as a way to save
money.
He quoted Toyota's definition of waste: "It's anything
other than the minimum amount of equipment, the minimum amount of
materials, parts, space and workers' time that are absolutely
necessary to add value to the product." Extra inventory causes the
need for a bigger facility and more energy consuming lights,
Middelkoop said of a reason for eliminating over producing.
Excessive lights in a building is a waste the customer is not
willing to pay a manufacturer, he said.
"When you
over-produce, you end up generating pollution," he said. "If you can
reduce your inventory ... you can actually reduce in a manufacturer
the hazardous waste." TO LEARN MORE about sustainability, go to
www.oksustainability.com.
To see more of The Edmond Sun or to
subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.edmondsun.com/.
Copyright
(c) 2009, The Edmond Sun, Okla.
Distributed by
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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