Business: Industrial
Getting Ideas for Energy Management Opportunities
2.1.11 Implementing a management system
A management system’s
advantages are in
•
Methodical approach
•
Consistency
•
Orderliness
•
Documentation
Often, an energy management program is a stand-alone undertaking. It would
benefit from synergistic support of other management systems of the company,
which share a common philosophy.
Quality or environmental management systems,
such as those based on ISO 9000 (QMS) and ISO 14001 (EMS), introduce order
and remove chaos – the daily “fire
fighting” of recurring problems. Since energy consumption is among the
most significant environmental aspects of any foundry, it makes the energy
management program especially suitable for integration with the EMS. Under
ISO 14001, a foundry must manage its significant aspects in a number of ways.
One of them is setting objectives and targets, from which environmental man-agement
programs (i.e., action plans) follow. Reduction of energy consumption is a
common objective, achievable through environmental (in this case, energy) management
programs. The stress of ISO 14001 on continual improvement (taken
up also by the new ISO 9000:2000) would strengthen this integration. It gives
the energy management program, which becomes part of an overall environmental
effort, the necessary regular attention and review by top management.
and improvements programs pay for ISO 14001 implementation costs in less
than a year.
One should not overlook the fact that a vast majority of the 30
000 companies registered to ISO 14001 around the world (spring 2001) cited
as a major reason for implementation of the EMS the internal cost benefits.
No doubt that reasoning was behind the GM and Ford requirement that their suppliers
will be registered to ISO 14001. The internal savings stem mainly from the
environmental management programs that reduce waste and which the standard
requires the organization to implement.
As of this writing, it is public information
that at least one major foundry in Canada, Wescast Inc., has already been registered
to the ISO 14001 environmental
management standard.
Other EMOs
Housekeeping
- Any organization will benefit from having up-to-date operating
procedures and work instructions – as a part of a management system – to
ensure consistency and standardization of operations. Better still is putting
process
documentation in flowchart form.