Four Questions With Judy Wlodarczyk
Position: Director of environment & energy, CONNSTEP, Connecticut’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership
Role: Developing integrated strategic planning and training to help Connecticut manufacturers achieve cost savings that also lighten their environmental footprints
Where is the intersection between green and lean?
Right at the beginning. Much of green manufacturing can be built upon the lean manufacturing philosophy, techniques and tools. When value stream mapping, I always tell companies, “Don’t do this twice. Do it once, and the first time through we’ll value stream map one of your product lines or processes, then look for the lean metrics and the green metrics at the same time.” It may take a bit more time, but it will take less time overall than assessing each component individually.
What is one thing manufacturers can do to ensure quality while also making their operations leaner and greener?
Companies need to train employees to inspect for quality at the source—instead of waiting until the end. So if I’m doing Process A, I need to determine that it meets certain quality criteria before I move on to Process B. If you can address it up front and early on, then you’re minimizing a lot of the cost of scrapping or reworking a product.
In your experience, what is the most overlooked or underrated improvement manufacturers can make to lessen waste in their businesses?
Packaging. It’s overlooked because companies tend to think that packaging is just a cost of doing business. But when packaging comes in, then companies have to get rid of it. Similarly, when a company sends a product out, employees are wrapping it and sending it without thought to cost or environmental impact. Some companies say, “Well, we recycle our cardboard.” Well, that’s nice, but you pay to have it recycled. And whoever is supplying you the product or the raw material that you get the cardboard in, they’re paying for it, so you’re ultimately paying for it, too. It’s important to look at eliminating that cost.
Is now still a good time to implement green manufacturing practices?
When the economy slows down like it is now, green still means go. If you’re getting cashstrapped or losing business, now is the time to look at these other wastes. We recently did a project for a large company. The company wanted me to help reduce white paper usage and develop a recycling process. Through that program, we ended up coming up with changes that resulted in $46,000 in savings on an annual basis, including reducing paper usage, doublesiding copies on printing and reducing waste pickups. It made employees more cognizant of using paper and reducing waste, and $46,000 is a significant amount of money right to the bottom line. So green still means go, even in tough times.