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Its 1997 I am making technical engineered plastic moulded parts and assemblies- I am striving to be the third Company in Wales to achieve ISO14001 and shoot up the charts in the Rover supplier Association. dreams of winning exclusive rights to the MG windscreen wash system beckoned. I have no idea what ISO14001 is all about- but RG2000 stated I had to create an “Environmental Management System”….so I went on a few courses run by the local Tree Huggers and was introduced to the term Mass Balance whilst developing a taste for vegan coleslaw.
We had previously been on a three year quest to develop a “Continuous improvement programme focusing on waste reduction with the order fulfilment process” and had wrestled with various Japanese techniques that all had acronyms and involved lots of floor marking tape, graphs, labels and taking photographs of everything. Continuous improvement had become a task something we show cased for our customers- if I am honest with myself- it looked pretty, it was safer, it ran faster, but I am not sure it was saving that much.
Mass balance talked about understanding your inputs to minimise your outputs- only use what you have to, don’t use anything unless its essential, make sure everything you use is working properly, consider all inputs – i.e. people, materials, environment etc. If you can balance these correctly you should reduce your outputs and so lessen your impact on the environment. Less cardboard in the skips, less oil in the barrel, less water down the drain etc.
Makes sense doesn’t it? What I realised was – it doesn’t only reduce your environmental impacts it also reduces the impact on your P+L. So we had a look at our “Continuous improvement programme focusing waste reduction in the order fulfilment process” and opened it up a bit to include and “Environmental Management System”
Running an injection moulding machine needs the following 8 elements:
Our “Continuous improvement programme focusing on waste reduction with the order fulfilment process” had focused only on making things faster (i.e. elements 4, 5, 6 above). By looking at the mass balance we developed a deeper focus on waste within the operation:
So by adopting a wider approach to waste management and fully understanding the wider inputs to the process savings can be made across the organisation. We probably overdid it on the input side as the ISO14001 Auditor gave us a tough time at the audit. He wanted to see more around waste segregation, bunds and emergency response systems. I remember debating the merits of spending our time managing waste versus segregating waste produced – unfortunately he was the auditor so we went out and bought a load of stuff.
Great story, happy ending? Yes in a way we achieved ISO14001, thought differently, saved a ton of cash but then Rover went bust – still the Medical Device boys liked what we’d done and it helped us open up that market.
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