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Lean, Energy, and Savings: Energy Impacts of Lean Manufacturing

Most utility programs focus on the “what,” that is, replacing one piece of equipment for another, more efficient piece of equipment. A key reason for this is to increase confidence in the amount of resulting energy savings. Utility programs that focus on “how,” that is, using a piece of equipment less or using it more optimally, often suffer from an inability to confidently quantify savings. At the same time, the last few decades have seen a proliferation of Lean Manufacturing practices across industry, where organizations focus on eliminating seven wastes: 1) excess product transport, 2) inventory, 3) excess movement, 4) waiting, 5) overproduction, 6) over processing, and 7) defects. Energy consumption is a component of each of these wastes. However, challenges in quantifying the energy savings resulting from waste elimination have slowed the integration of Lean with utility energy efficiency programs. In 2011, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance completed the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Energy Project, an effort that applied energy efficiency concepts within the MEP organizations of the Northwest. A component of this project was to quantify the energy savings from a Lean implementation at a customer of one of the MEP organizations. The project team attempted to use a combination of top-down (facility-wide) and bottom-up (enduse) approaches to estimate the energy savings resulting from a reduction in system start-up time at a food processing facility. This paper provides details on the project approach, results of the project, and next steps to refine and improve the approach for the future.