The Clean Manufacturing Game Part 1 of 10

Are You Playing the Clean Manufacturing Game?
A 10 part blog series discussing important aspects of clean manufacturing technology and implementation strategy.

Wasting Away Your Manufacturing Profits – Part 1 of 10

Manufacturing waste is generally thought of as any resource used in a production process that does not go out as part of the product and costs money to get rid of it. However, manufacturing waste also exists in many other forms, for example excessive factory space utilization for equipment (production and waste treatment equipment), inefficient material and process flows, inefficient use of facility labor and lost productivity of both labor and equipment. These types of wastes significantly impact a company’s bottom line too, but are often obscured in overhead accounts or generally overlooked in the manufacturing operation.

In an era of complex business challenges; intense global competitiveness, increasing environmental regulation and energy supply/cost issues, managers must have both lean and green (clean) manufacturing skills necessary to identify and eliminate multifaceted manufacturing wastes in their operations that stealthily steal away business profits. Numerous educational resources are available to manufacturers that teach methods for the identification of and financial accounting of both lean and green wastes. An integrated waste minimization program is being developed by Cleanlogix for use in its CleanTech marketing and sales programs. The new Cleanlogix program is called Cleanopoly™, Clean Manufacturing Strategy Game, and will provide a useful method for determining manufacturing wastes and implementing CleanTech solutions.

Manufacturers of advanced products need state-of-the-art clean manufacturing technology (CleanTech) and CleanTech implementation strategies for successful design and execution of manufacturing waste reduction programs. Manufacturing waste reduction programs may include one or a combination of the following technology components:

• Integrated CleanTech to eliminate or reduce all forms of manufacturing waste: time, labor, space, transport, defect, inventory, processing, equipment, raw materials, air pollution, water pollution, wastewater, solid wastes, and energy wastes.
• Advanced CleanTech for improved quality and reliability imposed by advanced materials, manufacturing methods and processes, and applications.
• Flexible automation, modular and clustered assembly operations (cells) to reduce operational waste.
• More adaptable and flexible production tools and methodologies to improve efficiency and productivity in low volume-high mix-high value production operations.

This series of blog articles provides manufacturing managers with an introduction to clean manufacturing and carbon dioxide (CO2) CleanTech for improving production cleaning, assembly processes and machining operations while eliminating operational and resource waste. CO2 CleanTech prevents or eliminates waste at the source by modifying cleaning, assembly, and machining processes using clean and green chemistry, and unique tool and process implementations. CO2 CleanTech increases both productivity and profitability.

David Jackson is President/CEO of Cleanlogix LLC and serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Cool Clean Technologies, Inc, based in Eagan, MN. He may be reached via e-mail at david.jackson@coolclean.com.

Part 2 of this series introduces clean manufacturing technology.