Overview

Many articles have appeared in the press about the problems associated with global warming, and looking at the carbon footprint of various business alternatives. This issue will not go away. And every enterprise has to address it. In fact, industry will either be forced or will, by itself have to develop, sustainable models of manufacturing. One of the intentions of this book is to support organizations in that effort.

Although all the maintenance departments in the world, even acting together, cannot solve the global warming dilemma, there are things that each of our firms can do to help, right now. Many of the Lean projects use the returns from improved use of energy to fund themselves.

By definition, Lean maintenance is also energy efficient. Energy is one of the inputs into almost any manufacturing process. Wasteful energy practices are both fat and, in today's public climate conversations, almost antisocial. The body of knowledge in fighting global warming is growing rapidly so there are always ideas out there worth looking at.

In the previous chapter, in the discussion on reducing compressed air leaks, the driving force was capacity and not efficiency. Over the long haul, the energy savings would probably dwarf the savings from an avoided compressor installation. The other advantage is that the energy savings would be there every month, after the leaks were fixed. In good times and bad there would be that small savings. Utility savings are like that. They are small rivulets of water flowing toward...