Integrating Energy and Environmental Management in Wood Furniture Industry. Faculty of Engineering, University of Kragujevac, Sestre Janji.
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. As energy costs continue to rise, industrial plants (even those of energy nonintensive industries such as furniture industry) need effective way to reduce the amount of energy they consume. Besides, there are a number of economic and environmental reasons why a company should consider environmental management initiatives. This paper provides a detailed guideline for implementing joint energy and environmental management system in wood furniture industrial company.
It covers in detail all essential aspects of the system: initial system assessment, organization, policy development, energy and environmental auditing, action plan development, system promotion, checking system performance, and management review. Introduction. The wood furniture industry includes manufacturing of furniture parts and their assembly with appropriate finishing operations. Basic materials in the industry are wood and wood- based materials (plywood, hardboard, MDF, HDF, OSB, etc.). Other materials, such as metal, foam, cloth, and plastic, are also used. The furniture manufacturers predominantly belong to the group of small and medium companies. The level of specific energy consumption (energy consumed per unit of finished product) depends on the manufacturing processes that are implemented in a company, the type of material being processed, applied woodworking technology, scale and type of production, the type of furniture that is produced, and so forth.
Furniture industry is relatively small energy consumer according to the classifications of DOE (US Department of Energy) and IEA (International Energy Agency). According to the systemization of data for different industries, the mean specific consumption of primary energy in the wood processing industry (which includes the production of wood furniture) in the EU is 0. Although the amount is relatively small, the potential for energy savings exists. Energy costs in an energy nonintensive industrial company (such as a furniture industry company) are often considered as fixed overheads, although they belong to the cost categories that can be easily managed.
However, due to the constant growth of energy prices, industrial companies in the industry become increasingly aware that the energy is an expensive commodity and therefore it should be used effectively in order to increase company’s profit. Therefore, companies become more motivated to introduce the practice of energy management as a part of their regular activities . Experience shows that positive effects of energy- efficient improvements were decreased over time. This is due to the fact that energy use in an industrial company is largely dependent on operational practices.
Production volume, schedule of operations, or the type of products that is being produced in an industrial plant can be significantly changed during the life of the company. Energy consumers in production process can be relatively energy efficient in initial production scenario, but significantly less effective under the changed production conditions. The presence of energy- efficient equipment, although very important, does not ensure that the industrial system will be energy efficient.
It is often the case that the energy- efficient equipment is being used in nonenergy- efficient way in some companies . There have been significant efforts during the last decade to define appropriate standards and best practices and implement the consistent energy management system to increase and maintain the energy savings. Knowledge and experience gained in the implementation of the thousands of energy efficiency projects caused the shift from traditional tactical level (once “build and forget” projects) to the strategic level of energy management, proposed and supported by a number of relevant international organizations, including the Energy Star (USA), National Resources Canada (Canada), Action Energy (UK), and EPA Victoria (Australia). Several national energy management standards exist: Denmark—DS/INF 1. Ireland—IS 3. 93: 2.
Sweden—SS 6. 27 7. USA—ANSI MSE 2. 00. Moreover, CEN - European Committee for Standardization, published European Standard EN 1. July 2. 00. 9 and the new International Standards Organization Management System Standard for Energy—ISO 5. July 2. 01. 1. Energy management system is focused on the efficient use of energy, water, and other raw materials. Standard activities in a systematic approach to energy management include energy procurement, billing and measurement, performance measurement, development of energy policy, energy auditing, establishing a correlation between energy used and the volume of final production, raise awareness, implementation of energy efficiency projects, training and education, management of investment projects, and so forth .
The factory workers are the first to be affected by the emissions produced by various operations, but surrounding areas can also be adversely impacted in the absence of minimum preventive controls. It should be also emphasized that furniture manufacturing companies often lack accounting evidence on generated wood waste .
Therefore, environmental issues were not on the priority list of industrial companies. However, furniture manufacturers are more faced with strict environmental regulations and restrictions which cause their need for environmental management. Besides, the proper attitude towards the environment of an industrial company is a desirable corporate behaviour which significantly affects the good image of the company at consumers and competition. Continual environmental pollution, fear of complete exhaustion of natural resources, increased public interest for preserving the environment, lack of organized and systematic monitoring of pollution consequences, and specific working conditions in the affected areas have led to the obvious need for the introduction of environmental management systems that are defined by standards, such as international ISO 1. EU - EMAS (Eco- Management and Audit Scheme) . It should control and reduce pollution and impact of the pollution on the environment originated from using raw materials and energy in production. Benefits from applying the system in the industry are(i)reducing the environmental impact,(ii)reducing the risk of potential environmental disasters, and(iii)reducing the costs required to maintain the system in accordance with the environment.
Environmental protection costs are the consequence of(i)investment and operating costs for the equipment of pollution control system,(ii)tariff for the disposal of waste (hazardous materials),(iii)training required for the environmental protection,(iv)monitoring, storing and analyzing data, reporting, and so forth. Under the system, environmental policy is defined and implemented, objectives and expectations are set, and the system for monitoring of environmental impacts arising as a result of production in an industrial company is established. The procedures to ensure continuous improvement of the impact of company performance on the environment and the procedures to reduce current and avoid future environmental accidents are also implemented. The energy management system should equally take into account the cost of energy and the efficiency of transformation, generation, and distribution of energy. On the other hand, the environmental management system is primarily focused on: compliance with legislation, minimization of the impact of production on the environment and reduction of emissions to atmosphere, and generation of solid waste and wastewater. Both management systems deal with the efficiency of raw material usage and waste reduction, since any (unnecessary) waste of raw materials means that more than necessary energy is being used and that environmental pollution is greater than necessary.
According to the analysis of relevant research, individual elements of the energy management system can be compared with the elements of the environmental management system . In an industrial company, universal practice of joint management of energy and environment can be therefore introduced.
The matrix identifies those aspects where some further attention is required to ensure that EEMS is developed in an effective way. The most common situation in a company is that levels of implementation of energy management. SPC CONTROL CHARTS : STATISTICAL INDICES VARIABLE CONTROL CHARTS Xbar and Sigma chart Xbar and Range chart X/MR, I/MR charts MX/MR (Moving Average) chart Three Way Control chart Run chart Individuals chart Cusum chart Short.
This enables continuous improvement of the energy and environmental performance of a plant and entire company with the primary aims of reducing: operational costs (achieved through energy savings and waste disposal costs), the amount of generated waste, and the impact of the company on the environment. Energy and Environmental Management System. The energy and environmental management system (EEMS) presents a system for improving energy and environmental performance of a company.
4/1, June 2004 11 qcc: An R package for quality control charting and statistical process control by Luca Scrucca Introduction The qcc package for the R statistical environment al-lows to: Monitor Processes in Real Time Identify nonconformances in real time and prevent defects. To minimize the cost of quality, more and more companies are adopting preventative and predictive methods for manufacturing quality.
Practically, it is a system that should enable the achievement of established goals by measuring, monitoring, and evaluating energy and environmental performance of production processes in industrial companies . It is important to bear in mind that this is a system that achieves continuous improvement.
The system takes care of both technical and human aspects of activity in the company, requires the constant support of top management, high- quality employees in energy and environmental management departments, and permanent source of funding. EEMS in an industrial company depends on type of industry, products, production volume, level of automation, number of workers, condition of production equipment, and so forth. But no matter what the type of a company is, the basic structural elements of the system are shown in Figure 1. The elements of EEMS in a wood furniture production company are presented in the following text. Figure 1: Structure of energy and environmental management system (EEMS). Elements of Energy and Environmental Management System.
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