Good practices for energy and fluids saving in industry

KPIs do not refer exclusively to energy, but also to all other operational measures or activities of great importance, for example productivity, efficiency of the production plant, losses in raw materials etc. Depending on the industry branch, and energy sources with significant influence onto the business, it is necessary to define those energy sources as KPIs and establish system for monitoring, control and improvement of them. If, for example, heat energy represents major cost in a certain industry, then the KPI should be Heat energy consumption, expressed in MJ, kWh or Sm3 per the unit of the product. Further more, for more efficient monitoring, it is necessary to introduce PIs, performance indicators, in this concrete example it would be Heat energy consumption in defined parts of the plant, but also Heat consumption of the biggest consumers. KPIs are like instrument panel in the cockpit of an airplane – they provide important information needed for the control and safe management. KPI improvement requires defining an “owner” of a certain KPI and it is also important to measure it in regular time frames. In order to improve something, measurement is of great essence. For energy sources, the companies which supply them perform the measuring and according to it they issue invoices on a monthly level. But is this enough? Usually a more frequent control is needed, for example daily, weekly or MTD(month to date) from the beginning of the month until the current day. To gain an impression of a certain KPI, it is necessary to compare this KPI with similar production plants, also to identify benchmarks for defined industry branch. For significant KPIs the “owner” of it should create a suitable strategy, by which he will determine the path for achieving the benchmark in a defined time frame. For improvement of a KPI there is often the necessity to involve multiple departments. In this case the KPI“owner” should identify an official team, that will meet in regular periods (for example bi-weekly) to achieve the improvement. On the internet there is many titles, tools and advises for better functioning of this team, mostly developed from Six Sigma technique for process improvement, as for example PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), DMAIC (Define-Measure- Analyze-Improve-Control). It is preferable to use the Pareto principle, meaning Pareto diagram (rule 80 / 20) and action records (Action Log). The Pareto principle says –20% of spent time and investments, brings 80% of savings. There are a lot of examples for application of this principle, as also finished diagrams, and the representatives of EEC have used it successfully many times for savings of energy and fluids in the industry. Action log is necessary primarily as a reminder related to the agreements from the meetings. The Action log should contain data such as: the person responsible to perform a task (action), detailed description of the action and the due date for concluding the action. The responsible person for the action should accept the action on its own and he / she should assess the time needed for completion of the action (due date). Many software tools have been developed for complete tracking of established team’s performance, but Excel is quite enough as well.