By Sophie De Waele, Sofie Van Den Eynden, Simon Van Royen, Bart Belis, Julien Dosogne
Environmental topics continue to make a more prominent place in business. Manufacturing is often still synonymous with resource consumption and pollution. Today, more than ever, manufacturers are expected to demonstrate their sustainable engagement.
Governments worldwide are putting sustainable development high on the agenda. The European Commission’s Green Deal aims to make Europe climate-neutral in 2050, and the UN has 17 sustainable development goals where climate and clean energy also plays an important role. In order to achieve this, data analytics and AI are crucial tools for manufacturers to reduce waste, energy, and water consumption dramatically.
How mature is your company?
Data and AI can support companies obtaining their sustainability goals through three levels of maturity:
- Monitor: you can’t manage what you can’t see. Data can help manufacturers track performance metrics such as energy usage, material consumption, and waste across different parts of the manufacturing process and support improvement and the evolution of targets.
- Optimize: simulate outcomes for business stakeholders. Simulations can help manufacturers optimize their operations, reduce costs, improve quality, and enhance customer satisfaction before making costly decisions.
- Automate: self-optimizing systems can take real-time action. Eventually, self-optimizing systems can help manufacturers increase system efficiency, which goes hand-in-hand with an environmental footprint reduction.
Use case approach
The first step to enhancing sustainability is gaining insights into energy consumption by monitoring and collecting data. Start by creating a plan and dividing the factories into manageable, similar areas across locations. Areas can be addressed step by step, ensuring consistency across all areas for coherent data collection and analysis. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, split the initiative into phases and roll them out iteratively.
Phase 1: Define the scope
Goal: set the stage by defining the scope of the area, the people involved, and objectives.
The first phase sets clear expectations on what will be touched upon and which key questions will be answered. Engage stakeholders from the start to ensure commitment and clarity on expected outcomes and their roles. They will be the point of contact throughout the different phases in an area and even after.
Phase 2: Asses the current state
Goal: get an overview of the current situation in each area.
Assessing the current situation of an area is key for creating an overview of the whole process and what is already measured. This involves understanding the existing infrastructure, machinery meters, KPIs, reports, and the normal energy consumption. This information can be gathered by consulting the documentation and interviewing people working in an area. This process overview is the foundation that is built upon and extended in the next phases.
Phase 3: Develop a shared process map with KPIs and meters
Goal: Improve the current process by adding KPIs and meters to obtain additional insights.
General process map
If one process is executed in different locations there might be differences in the process map. If that is the case, standardize the process map across different locations while identifying and addressing any location-specific variations, so that the KPIs and what is measured are the same and the different locations can be benchmarked.
KPIs Tree
Starting from the high-level KPIs, start building the tree in line with the process map. Document what is being measured and how the data should be stored. Each KPI should be completed with clear definitions of what is being measured and why. Next to this, any potential influences on other KPIs should be defined as well. The KPI tree should be free to consult by all stakeholders to provide them a clear view of where these numbers are coming from up until meter level.
Metering plan
Map the measures needed for the KPIs to the meters required to gather the necessary information. Map the locations of these meters on the process map and link them to the KPIs. For each area, there should be an overview of actual meters, essential meters that are not installed, and meters that are nice to have but not installed.
If this is not yet in place, there should be a naming convention for these meters to make it clear what they are measuring and where they are installed. For each meter, a clear alert level should be defined. These levels can be based on manufacturer recommendations or historical data, the former being the preferred choice as a starting point.
Phase 4: Visuals and Reports
Goal: provide a detailed process overview consistent across areas.
After clearly defining the KPIs and measures, these should be turned into meaningful reports to get insights into the processes based on the end user's requirements. For each level of the organization, clear reports have to be created. Although KPIs and visuals should be consistent across areas and locations, the granularity and level of details can differ.
Phase 5: RACI & Communication channels
Goal: create a network of area experts sharing knowledge and keeping the process as standard as possible.
This step is to ensure the way of working becomes part of the routine and allows for changes over time to be consistent across factories. Therefore some new communication channels will need to be set:
- Regular cross-location meetings to discuss developments.
- Assign responsibility for maintaining documentation.
- Teams channel for the area with relevant people
- Share corrections implemented after adjusting a KPI.
- Share changes in checklists
- Provide assistance to maximize the data actionability of a new meter
Phase 6: Learnings
Goal: evaluate the process, identify improvements, and streamline the approach.
Evaluating and refining process based on insights
Once the new tracking system is in place, assess the impact and capabilities of the new tracking system by answering the key questions addressed in the first phase such as:
- Is the energy consumption within the expected range?
- Can potential improvements be identified?
- Do we see large differences between locations?
- What is the impact of the start and stop of production?
- Do we need to update maintenance schedules?
- How do external factors affect consumption?
- Do the people have enough information to act on when there is an alert?
- Can we build a first use case that can be used to communicate success with the other locations?
Streamline the approach for future areas
Conduct retrospectives to collect feedback from core and area-specific teams to refine the approach for future iterations.
Conclusion
Gaining insight into energy consumption is the first step to achieving net zero. This phased approach ensures that improvements are manageable, scalable, and sustainable, paving the way for a more eco-friendly manufacturing industry.
Based on this knowledge, the next steps can be taken for optimizing and decreasing energy usage in a manufacturing environment.