Nepa seizes lean, green race lead

Sep 14 2007 By The Journal

REGIONAL Development Agency One NorthEast has seized the national lead in lean, green manufacturing as part of its comprehensive business support package.

Its pioneering North-East Productivity Alliance has worked with more than 300 companies in the past four years, analysing their working practices and delivering significant productivity savings, as well as creating 76 new jobs and safeguarding a further 1,069 posts.

The alliance’s aim is to improve the performance of the North-East’s manufacturing industry by focusing on removing waste, resulting in increased productivity and competitiveness.

As a direct result of the project’s success, One NorthEast has added an Energy Resource Efficiency project to its support portfolio. The £5m project is helping businesses tackle rising energy costs.

A team of engineers has been seconded to the project under the guidance of Allen Jones and Mike Thompson, working closely with firms to develop an energy action
plan, analysing usage and highlighting means to cut bills.

One NorthEast engaged with industry to develop these two groundbreaking projects, which identify and remove waste from manufacturing.

The classification of waste is:

:: Waste of manufacturing space.
:: Waste of human effort.
:: Waste of materials.
:: Waste of energy/water.
:: Waste of underperforming machines/equipment

Thirty-six organisations are working with the ERE project, with a further 22 about to join.

An early success is at a North-East manufacturer. ERE experts identified that by installing a heat recovery system on an ink drying machine, this would potentially yield 60% less energy use. That equates to over £36,000 per year in savings for the manufacturer.

The company has three of these machines. When all have been modified, it hopes to save more than £100,000 per annum from its current electricity bill – more than 10% of its total electricity costs.

The alliance’s programme uses best practice dissemination – lean techniques which originated in the Japanese automotive industry. The North-East is home to the Nissan car plant in Sunderland, for the past seven years Europe’s most efficient automotive plant.

It, therefore, seemed sensible to use this wealth of knowledge to support general manufacturing in the region.

To assist in the dissemination of its knowledge, Nissan seconded staff with specific skills to the project and gave access to its training courses and manufacturing facility.

The methodology applied is to disseminate knowledge by the process of “learning by doing”. The objective is to support a company through the important learning phase until it is self sufficient.

A unique feature of the alliance’s methodology is that the dissemination of knowledge process is directly linked to national qualifications.

NEPA is also working with the new National Skills Academy for Manufacturing and regional universities/colleges to develop new manufacturing-focused qualifications.

During the implementation of best practice through continuous improvement, the alliance’s experts recognised that efficiencies achieved through activities such as Operation Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) improvement could also deliver savings in energy use – which led to the subsequent formation of the ERE programme.

ERE uses the same methodology as pioneered by the alliance’s lean project. The ERE programme aims to help:

:: Companies address energy as a controllable resource.
:: Identify potential opportunities focusing on energy.
:: Enable a reduction of energy consumption per unit produced.
:: Improve awareness on the effect of energy consumption on business finances and climate change.
:: Deliver opportunities to improve energy supply and use efficiency in tandem.
:: Embed skills to enable continuous improvement in energy management and utilisation.
:: Whole Business, Whole Workforce, promoting personal changes in the workplace and at home.

This package provides a unique methodology of assessing the energy use within a manufacturing organisation. The traditional approach focused on experts auditing a site and advising how all problems can be “fixed”. The new approach can also deliver this but targets facilitated self diagnosis, design and deliver.