How is VFE helping a growing number of advanced manufacturers realise significant financial and environmental benefits from sustainable business practices?
Advanced manufacturing innovations are helping businesses across industries to operate both sustainably and with greater efficiency. Could your operations benefit, and how?
VFE has always set out to improve our customers’ businesses and help keep their operations running. With the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow in November, pointing a laser to the importance of sustainable business practices, business improvements must take the form of new efficiencies and more sustainable processes if manufacturers are to reduce their environmental impacts.
| “93 per cent of the world’s 250 largest companies are now reporting on sustainability.” |
Discover what steps we’ve taken to help our customers operate with greater social responsibility, become more efficient, and move along the road to net zero.
Why is sustainability important in manufacturing?
As the UN writes, “worldwide consumption and production — a driving force of the global economy — rests on the use of the natural environment and resources in a way that continues to have destructive impacts on the planet.” Sustainable consumption and production is preoccupied with reversing this trend; in other words, “doing more and better with less”.
The Environmental Protection Agency defines sustainable manufacturing specifically as the creation of manufactured products through economically sound processes that minimise negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources.
The environmental crisis facing the world means it’s more important than ever that businesses comply with sustainable initiatives. But there are also commercial benefits.
The benefits of sustainable manufacturing
Sites that are successful in decoupling their growth from negative environmental impacts and increasing their resource efficiency stand to unlock a range of benefits, including:
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increased operational efficiency (through reduced costs and waste)
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stronger, better-protected brand and reputation
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longer-term business viability and commercial success
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a competitive advantage in a marketplace increasingly favourable of sustainability
“The COVID-19 pandemic offers [manufacturers] an opportunity to build recovery plans that will reverse current trends and change our consumption and production patterns towards a more sustainable future”, the UN writes.
Your strategic service providers can and should be playing a key role in helping you to adapt your operations accordingly. But how?
Related read: The Road to Recovery: Preparing Your Operations to Ramp Up Post-COVID
What steps is VFE taking on the road to net zero?
“As a service provider first and foremost, we are committed to helping every one of our customers future-proof their operations for the road ahead”, reveals Tim Hulbert, managing director of VFE’s parent company, Busch UK. (Read more: VFE Acquired by Busch Vacuum Solutions.)
When the road ahead must lead to net zero, we take several strategies to help our customers improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of their heat treatment and advanced manufacturing operations.
Energy-efficient product innovations
In 2020 we launched our energy-saving system for vacuum furnaces. The system works by automating the shutdown and restart of all your vacuum furnaces, removing your reliance on manual processes. Crucially, it safely reduces your energy costs.
If available, the system can switch quench/purge gas from argon to less-expensive nitrogen in response to the loaded program cycle, further reducing costs.
The system incorporates power monitoring to show power consumed and estimated power saved (in kWh, £ and kg.CO2). This can be downloaded or sent electronically using our remote-monitoring system, making visible the cumulative energy savings and cost benefits.
How much could you save?For the electrical-power saving features, VFE has customer feedback of an average £15k saving per year per furnace. For the gas switching, nitrogen is approximately 25% of the cost of argon so every cycle able to be operated on nitrogen rather than argon will save that proportionate cost (dependent on furnace volume). |
Energy reduction can be further compounded with our RoMan Transformers. Because they are water-cooled, they are smaller and lighter than traditional transformers, so they can be installed much closer to the heat source. The close coupling boosts the equipment’s energy-saving properties by helping to reduce electrical losses in the power delivery system.
How much could you save?In the example on this page, a customer made 764kWh of daily savings by replacing the voltage regulating transformer on a furnace with a RoMan heating transformer. With a power billing rate of $0.10/kWh, there are $76 savings per day. Over a year of use, just from power (kW) optimisation alone, this furnace will save almost $28,000. |
For large scale operations, site-wide control of furnace and autoclave performance is key to maximising efficiency and reducing waste. In these cases, our management and control systems (FMCS/AMCS) will transform your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Unlock energy savings from each upgraded machine by tracking machine availability, productivity and performance in real time and at scale, all from an easily accessible dashboard.
Click each link to find out more about our FMCS and AMCS solutions and how you could benefit.
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Maintaining optimum machine performance through routine servicing
Routine servicing and maintenance plays a vital role in reducing energy wastage and maximising efficiencies.
We offer ServiceCare preventative maintenance contracts to keep all our customers’ equipment in prime condition. Routine servicing as part of your ServiceCare agreement ensures that your equipment complies with relevant legislation and that it operates correctly and accurately, minimising downtime, optimising energy use and reducing waste.
How green are your advanced manufacturing operations?
As the need to deliver a low-carbon economy grows, manufacturers are under increasing pressure to minimise wastage and operate more energy-efficiently. But there are also opportunities to be found by running more sustainable, energy-efficient operations.
Both VFE and our parent company, Busch UK, are committed to taking care of our customers’ vacuum supply, our employees, the environment, and the communities in which we operate, locally and around the world.
For help improving the energy efficiency of your production lines, reducing your energy costs, and operating within the remit of government and personal sustainability KPIs, get in touch today.
Download our free guide to learn more about simplifying your heat treatment servicing plans and solving operational challenges like sustainability.
