Category: Process Improvement

Description

An important component of manufacturing cost is energy management and more needs to be done throughout the region to provide effective and efficient training programs that help the industry to understand and implement best energy management practices. The proposed workshops will introduce the concept of lean thinking and how this concept impacts energy consumption. Tools to identify waste will be introduced and procedures to calculate potential savings will be demonstrated using existing energy recommendations databases. Case studies will be presented to demonstrate how energy management practices have been implemented in similar industries.

Content

1. Introduction to lean manufacturing. How is lean manufacturing related to energy savings?
   1. Value stream mapping (VSM)
   2. Incorporation of energy consumption into VSM
   3. Using energy management systems (EMS) for decision making
      1. Data mining
      2. Data analysis
      3. Decision making
      4. Energy audits. Integration with lean tools
      5. Case of study 1: best energy saving recommendations
      6. Case of study 2: Kaizen groups and impact on energy consumption
      7. Group activity: Data mining and trend analysis of energy consumption.

Location and date

The workshop starts at 8: 30 am and ends at 4:30 pm.

1. Marion, VA. November 20, 2014. Venue: Smith County Office. 121 Bagley Circle, Suite 100, Marion, VA 24354

Registration

The event is sponsored through a grant from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification & Community Revitalization Commission. However, a $25 registration fee will be charged to cover materials, coffee breaks, and lunch. To register, please download the registration form and mail it with your payment to:

Linda Jones, VCE-Central District, 150 B Slayton Avenue, Danville, VA 24540

Please contact Dr. Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu or 540 231-0978 if you need further details.

Instructor

Dr. Henry Quesada is an associate professor at the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia Tech. Henry has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a M.Sc and Ph.D. from Purdue University. He has organized and delivered over 65 workshops impacting more than 2,500 people in the areas of continuos improvement, supply chain management, and marketing applied to the forest products industry. For a detailed bio of Dr. Quesada please follow this link.

Non-discrimination Statement

Virginia Cooperative Extension programs and employment are open to all, regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, genetic information, marital, family, or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. An equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

ADA Statement 

If you are a person with a disability and desire any assistive devices, services or other accommodations to participate in this activity, please contact Henry Quesada at 540-2310978/TDD* during business hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. to discuss accommodations 5 days prior to the event. *TDD number is 800-828-1120

Sponsors

IUFRO Division 5. Research Party 5.04.13: Industrial Engineering, Operation Analysis, and Logistics

by  Sevtap Erdogan, serdogan@vt.edu

Identifying the need of life cycle assessment is helpful in order to have a better idea of how to figure out life cycle inventory method. The environmental impacts of human attitude towards the usage of products and services have effect on sustainable development. These environmental impacts might be the emissions into the environment, high energy use or land use, which depends on the products end-of-life status such as collection/sorting, reuse, recycling, waste disposal (Rebitzer et all, 2004). Environmental management concept used to be an alternative to make regulations on how to determine and minimize the defects of products to the environment along with organizations, business consultants and public concerns. However, life cycle assessment ( LCA) is the optimal method to look into the whole concept considering process chain and life time of products and their effects (Horne et all, 2009).

In other words, LCI analysis gives the data to determine energy input, needed material and environmental emission of a product system in their whole life cycle so that this given data could be used to maintain optimum desired data flow form ‘cradle to grave’ or ‘cradle to cradle’ ( Gong et all, 2009).

In their case study Puettmann and Wilson (2005) evaluated the life-cycle analysis of wood products by focusing on cradle-to-gate life cycle inventory method. Raw materials, including fuel resources and emission to air, water, and land for glued-laminated timbers, kiln-dried and green softwood lumber, laminated veneer lumber, softwood plywood, and oriented strandboard were the measuring units of the life-cycle inventory. Results showed that when producing wood components , a third of needed their energy was derived from renewable resources and the rest was from non-renewable resources used with considering forest regeneration and harvesting or transportation.

Wood is one of the most renewable material and regenerative fuel around the world which makes it accurate to investigate life cycle assessment within wooden products. Packaging materials are one of the good example of its importance in the life cycle stages. Using life cycle assessment helps to find out packaging container datasets which is convenient to be able to model different types of containers or boxes. This allows even to produce environmental friendly packaging goods (Hischier et all, 2005).

Specifically related example with wood-based products was conducted examining the life cycle inventory of medium density fiberboard (MDF) by focusing especially in the aspects of electricity profile and transportation gates. It is found out that both the transport of the product and electricity generation have significant influence on life cycle inventory analysis in the process of MDF manufacturing. Furthermore, the location of the process is another parameter effect LCI analysis depending on the distance ( Rivela et all, 2007).

In conclusion, the adaptation of life cycle assessment methodology and especially life cycle inventory analysis of wood products have been growing compared to last twenty years relatively in Europe and Northern America. Implementing and analyzing the life cycle inventory provides more competing products which leads to success in sustainable development and better decision makings within the process ( Werner and Richter, 2007).

References

• Gong, X. Z., Nie, Z. R., Wang, Z. H., & Zuo, T. Y. (2009). Algorithm for Materials Life Cycle Inventory. Journal of Beijing University of Technology, 12, 018.
• Hischier, R., Althaus, H. J., & Werner, F. (2005). Developments in wood and packaging materials life cycle inventories in ecoinvent (9 pp). The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 10(1), 50-58.
• Horne, R. E., Grant, T., & Verghese, K. L. (2009). Life cycle assessment: principles, practice and prospects. Csiro Publishing.
• Puettmann, M. E., & Wilson, J. B. (2005). Life-cycle analysis of wood products: cradle-to-gate LCI of residential wood building materials. Wood and Fiber Science, 37, 18-29.
• Rebitzer, G., Ekvall, T., Frischknecht, R., Hunkeler, D., Norris, G., Rydberg, T., … & Pennington, D. W. (2004). Life cycle assessment: Part 1: Framework, goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, and applications. Environment international, 30(5), 701-720.
• Rivela, B., Moreira, M. T., & Feijoo, G. (2007). Life cycle inventory of medium density fibreboard. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 12(3), 143-150.
• Werner, F., & Richter, K. (2007). Wooden building products in comparative LCA. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 12(7), 470-479.

Orange Walk, Belize. December 10, 2013. During the week of December 2 2013, Dr. Henry Quesada, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sustainable, delivered a workshop in financial management to sugar cane farmers in Orange Walk, Belize. Dr. Quesada was contacted through PeaceWork, an American organization that supports and collaborates with communities in developing countries through social and training projects. PeaceWork recently established an agreement with a Belizean organization under the name of Sugar Industry Research and Development Institute (SIRDI) that supports the local sugar cane farmers through training, technology transfer, and technical assistance.

Orange Walk is the heart of the sugar cane industry of Belize with more than 25,000 hectares in production that are managed by over 5,000 farmers. The majority of the farmers are second and third-business generation and 90% are considered Maya people. Currently, sugar cane is delivered to a mill processing facility owned by an American company in Orange Walk. The final product, sugar, is exported to European and American markets. During the last couple of years the mill have been using bagasse, the most significant byproduct of the sugar cane milling process, to co-generated electricity and there have been conversations to provide more compensation to the farmers from the sale of electricity.

The Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia Tech is taking steps to diversify its academic portfolio from traditional renewable materials such as wood to agriculture products such as sugar cane. Sugar cane has become a significant and important crop in developing and developed countries not just because the production of sugar but also because the impact on the bioenergy and composite material markets. The training delivered to sugar cane producers in Orange Walk has designed to help farmers prepare for incoming opportunities and challenges in those markets. In total, 110 farmers where trained as well as nine of SIRDI’s staff. In addition to the delivery of the training, a financial management book was prepared with theory and examples of how to performance financial management applied to the production of sugar cane.

For additional details or questions, please contact Dr. Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu