Sustainable operations for manufacturing in Australia

Productivity, competitiveness and sustainability have been identified by the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) as the most significant actions for manufacturers to adopt in Australia.

While MESA International has been around for more than 20 years, it is now reaching out to Asia Pacific and Australia. It is a global community of manufacturers, producers, industry leaders and solution providers who are focused on improving operations management capabilities through the effective application of technology solutions and best practices.

The MESA Asia Pacific Expansion Committee (APEC) has been in existence for two years and Greg Johnson has been chairman for 18 months and is also leading the Australian working group.

MESA is suited to industries such as mineral processing, manufacturing, including automotive, pharmaceutical and food and beverage. Johnson says that there will be issues unique to each industry, but it is interesting to note that there is a certain amount of commonality in the tools and methods used across all these process manufacturing industry.

So what are manufacturing enterprise solutions? They are basically information systems that help users plan, operate and control physical production. The system looks at the shop floor - including the machines, energy and water being used and waste being generated - providing a physical view as distinct from the financial view provided by an accounting system.

“Information is neutral,” Johnson says. “You can direct it to any goal and what is becomingly increasingly important in Australia is: How much energy we are consuming, What waste streams we are producing and How much water we are using? Not just how much, but why are we using it? How can we reduce it? How much can we reduce it by?”

The MES allows the user to identify where the energy is used and highlight any inefficiencies. For example, information may identify that one product may be using more energy to produce compared with another. This information then prompts the user to investigate further and find out the reason. It may be that a certain raw material may use more energy when it is processed. The user can then go back to the supplier or change the supplier to resolve the problem.

Adelaide Brighton Cement highlighted the benefits of MES with a case study presentation at the inaugural MESA seminar which was held in Melbourne in September. Here the theme was establishing sustainable solutions for operations management and IT systems to support sustainability in manufacturing. The cement company used its system to compare operating practices across different shifts and crews working at the plant. The accurate recording and reporting of information highlighted and identified that some crews were operating more efficiently than others. This information provided the visibility (or proof) to warrant an investigation to find the root cause and instigate changes in the behaviour of the inefficient crews to achieve sustainability improvements.

Johnson says that it’s amazing in this day and age that many industrial organisations still don’t understand what they are doing - they understand technically what they are doing but they don’t understand how much they are wasting and how much could be saved. This is changing, mainly due to increased regulation and costs but also because of corporate social responsibility.

“Understanding your energy consumption, reducing energy consumption and being as sustainable as you can be is becoming more important to the manufacturer,” says Johnson. “Especially in the food and beverage sector, because there is a cost saving and it’s also something that can be marketed.” This is why manufacturers require auditable, believable information.

According to Johnson, having the goal to become more sustainable is the first step in the right direction. The next step is the information which will provide a starting point. However, too many manufacturers have different systems with disjointed information that is hard to interpret and understand.

“This is the problem we are addressing with MESA,” says Johnson. “We want to eliminate this. We want to provide this information and say: here is the problem, what are you going to do about it? And not only that, in future we want to be trending everything and if you’re on a bad trend you will be alerted immediately.”

Sustainability is a pressing concern for manufacturers in Australia because of the level of water and energy used and the amount of waste generated. Over the next year, MESA is planning to provide best practice guidance and facilitate more discussion on these topics with its members.