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Go on green

Our Editorial Advisory Board offers advice on a hot-button topic for all materials handling professionals in the coming years: the environment. Their overwhelming advice? Find ways to go green now.

By Tom Andel, Editor-In-Chief -- Modern Materials Handling, 1/1/2008

Starting with this issue, Modern's Editorial Advisory Board will use this column to share observations, problems, solutions, pet peeves—anything that happens to be on their mind—with you.

In future issues our advisory board members will take turns, one columnist a month, to share their ideas. But since this is the kickoff column, we thought we'd introduce them to you all at once via a topic all materials handlers will have to address in the coming years: The environment.

Ron Giuntini, OEM Product-Services Institute

Just by using remanufactured goods, companies can reduce costs and have an impact on the environment. This cost reduction is often 30% or greater for “exchange” transactions (trade-in used/impaired good for a remanufactured good). Reman is multiple times more environmentally friendly than almost all forms of pollution prevention. It eliminates the need to employ 85% of the resources required to manufacture a new-condition good. This is the ultimate form of “lean.” The authors of lean, Womack et al, have recently done a mea culpa and admitted that focusing on leaning-out supply has marginal impacts on the bottom line, but leaning-out demand is truly the “holy grail.” This is exactly what reman accomplishes. The carbon credits in using reman vs. new-condition goods will become highly material to “truly” having a favorable impact on the environment.

John Hill, ESYNC

Many tools are available from the materials handling industry to help users become more environmentally effective. For example, a supply chain execution (SCE) system can be used to create and monitor conformance with a sustainability matrix that contains the components of a green initiative. The matrix can be populated with environmental improvement targets and the various kinds of materials handling systems, equipment or practices needed to achieve them.

An SCE package can provide precise measurement of the materials consumed or used in handling, packaging, and shipping products. A cartonization feature present in most warehouse management systems (WMS) enables you to identify the precise size and capacity of cartons needed to eliminate unnecessary dunnage when picking or packing. This software can also look at pallet usage to ensure proper use of capacity and enable efficient handling of recycled materials—not only to support a green initiative, but also to document and provide feedback to employees.

Even if you do not have an SCE system, by identifying those areas of your warehouse or DC that have the potential for “green” improvement, establishing metrics, measuring performance and publishing results, you could still make a significant contribution to environmental cleanup.

Ken Ruehrdanz, Dematic

There's plenty of green to be had through energy management and rebates.Conveying and sorting systems are typically turned on at the beginning of the day and run full speed all day until turned off at the end of the day. However, typical operations do not have high rate material flow throughout a shift. So why not design the control system to match energy usage with the spikes in throughput? Control systems can monitor system activity and slow down or speed up to meet throughput demands and use just enough power to do the job required. Operating at slower speeds means reduced energy consumption as well as reduced wear and tear on equipment. This increases the life of the system while reducing maintenance costs. Rebates alone can help a system's ROI. One distribution center that upgraded its conveyor system controls and added a new energy saving conveyor system received a rebate for $40,000 from its electric power provider.

Susan Rider, Rider and Associates

Environmental concerns are driving conservation in plants and DCs. It's a green issue in the financial sense, too. Energy is a precious commodity and represents a big dollar number in the budget. Investigating lighting alternatives, and using the newly designed low energy lighting or motion sensor lighting could significantly reduce your energy costs. A retrofit could give you a payback in less than six months based on reduced energy cost and a reduction in the future cost of power.

When it comes to new materials handling systems, make sure you identify efficient power consumption as a requirement in your criteria. This will help you avoid long term ramifications such as high energy costs. You may even be able to make existing systems more efficient by purchasing an “energy use optimizer.” This connects to your existing electrical motors so they use only the amount of energy required to run a machine.

John Usher, University of Louisville

Think of the energy and natural resources consumed to produce the flow of all the goods through the supply chain to deliver a pair of shoes to a consumer. What if we could get products to consumers without a logistics system? Two emerging technologies, direct digital manufacturing and nanotechnology, may make this possible. Nanotechnology involves the science and engineering of the extremely small. It involves building devices on the nanometer scale (1 billionth of a meter). Scientists and engineers all over the world are racing to produce smaller and smaller devices such as pumps, motors and complex assemblies by controlling the exact placement of individual atoms. Direct digital manufacturing (DDM) involves the manufacture of devices using a 3-D computer model and layer-by-layer techniques such a laser sintering, stereo lithography, direct metal deposition. It is not hard to forecast a small desktop unit that could manufacture items one atom at a time from a simple supply of common base elements. Need a new pair of shoes? Just download the 3-D model, send it to your desktop fabricator, and build them on the spot. The greener “anti-logistics” logistics system lies ahead.

Col. Alan Will, 2D Marine Logistics Group

For the longest time at Camp Lejeune, we've thrown boxes away and done other wasteful things. I'm now looking at ways to re-use items. We are now buying reusable containers. If we use a collapsible container, we reduce the amount of trash we have to move from the warehouse to the dumpsters and there's less of a need for suppliers to pick them up. Over time, you'll save money by not having to continually buy a consumable container. It's easy to be short-sighted and say these collapsibles cost four times what corrugated costs. But once you make that big investment in collapsibles and reusable plastic pallets, they pay for themselves.

We're also getting smarter about how information management affects product movement. With our WMS we put high demand items closer to the shipping and receiving departments. That has reduced the number of tuggers we use, and that means less energy used.

Brett Wood, Toyota Material Handling USA 

Fuel cells may some day help the lift truck industry promote a cleaner environment and control greenhouse gas emissions. They'll let lift trucks work continuously with simple hydrogen refueling and because spare batteries are unnecessary, they'll also reduce total operating costs. However, our industry is several months away from issuing guidelines on fuel cell lift trucks.

For right now, there are other things we can do. Proper oil, tire and battery disposal is important. Many materials handling equipment dealers will take these items back rather than have customers dispose of them in landfills. For users of internal combustion engine trucks, the Environmental Protection Agency is issuing new fleet averaging standards to reduce emission levels. To help meet these requirements, some state and local governments are giving incentives to replace old lift truck fleets with newer models. Just by meeting regulations you will have an environmental impact. But that's not enough. By investing the time and resources to go beyond regulations, you can have a significant impact.

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