Going Green: Reduce & Reuse through Optimization and Remnant Tracking

ÓGreenÓ itÕs the latest buzzword sweeping corporate offices all across North America. The boss wants to ‘go green,” the accountants agree that it sounds like it could save money; marketing says green sells and sales says consumers are demanding ‘green’ products. “So, let’s do it” everyone agrees, “Let’s go green!”

Three solar panels, one Toyota Prius and a wind operated toilet later and the bottom line has not budged. The customers are not beating down the doors. Sales is playing table football rather than answering phones. What went wrong? When did going green get so difficult?

Part of what makes being a green-friendly company so frustrating is that it is hard to separate green trends from truly green investments. Purchasing hybrid cars for business trips might reduce a carbon footprint or two, but it doesn’t really help a company produce products efficiently and sustainably. Solar panels on the roof may cut down on electricity taken from the grid but they don’t address the other wasteful and inefficient elements of production.

True green investments not only reduce the environmental impact of a company, they also improve the nuts and bolts aspects of production. They must be sustainable and provide long-term or permanent benefits, and they should be firmly tested and proven rather than trendy or gimmicky. Aggressively lean companies have pursued such solutions for years, both in software designed to tweak productivity and in machines built for maximum efficiency. In other words, true green tools have always been available, but only now, as a larger conscience for conservation takes shape, have they found a wider market.

The plastics industry has a lot to gain by going green as quickly as possible. It’s not just a chance to alter public perception of plastics in general; it’s also a chance to implement time and material saving practices and technology that can make the difference between a modern, efficient company and a lumbering, soon-tobe- obsolete one.

Two options for green technology exist that are particularly well-suited for the plastics industry: optimization and scrap recycling. Of the two, optimization software is significantly easier to learn and implement. Using a typical optimizer is as simple as installing the software and entering a few basic parameters. The optimizer typically requires a cut list of parts and a raw material inventory in order to produce results, which come in the form of optimized cutting patterns. The quality of the optimized patterns depends on the level of sophistication of the optimization algorithm powering the software. Better algorithms, and therefore better software packages, will typically cost a littlemore than bargain bin programs.

Additionally, most optimization packages available today are offered with optional post processors for CNC panel saws. The post allows optimized patterns to be sent electronically to the saw for cutting and eliminates error prone and time-consuming manual entry of cutting instructions at the saw. The boost in saw productivity alone can cover the cost of the software within a single fiscal year. Add to that the improvement in material efficiency, accuracy of reporting and estimating, as well as a range of other benefits, and optimization easily becomes one of the best software investments a company can make.

The second, more intensive option, often goes hand-inhand with optimization software. Scrap recycling is a logical method to improving material efficiency and reducing waste material. In a typical system, usable scrap pieces from a previous job are added back into inventory for future use. The complexity of tracking scrap pieces and having them on hand when called for can scrap (no pun intended) even the best intentions and meticulous organization. Production won’t wait for Bob to hunt down piece number 1249B from the chaos in the warehouse, they’ll just grab a fresh sheet. Over time, the discrepancy between inventory actually on hand and inventory according to the software grows so large than scrap recycling is abandoned, if not officially, then certainly in practice on the shop floor.

Fortunately, technology has advanced and the gap between virtual and real, at least in terms of real-time inventory tracking, is diminishing. Most modern CNC saw equipment can print part labels in real-time, assigning unique IDs stored in barcodes to each part. The barcodes can contain a variety of information that can be retrieved quickly with a commercially available barcode scanner. Among other things, the barcode can store the material type and dimensions of a scrap piece, which is laid aside until it can be used. If the optimization software is capable of interacting with bar code scanners, the saw operator simply scans the label on the scrap piece he wants to use and it is entered into the optimizer’s inventory. If the optimizer doesn’t use it, the piece remains on the shelf for future use. Given the relative cost of some plastics, their multitude of uses, and their infinite shelf life, a sophisticated scrap management system save untold thousands in raw material costs.

No matter where you stand regarding the green movement, optimization and scrap management are a good place for plastics manufacturers to get their feet wet. If you’re still skeptical of the “green revolution,” know that optimization has been around for decades. A good quality optimizer is the coalescence of many years of refinement and testing, and can work on almost any machine in any manufacturing environment. On the other hand, if you’re fully committed to “going green” then optimization and scrap management are a perfect fit, particularly in the plastics industry. You don’t even have to drive the Prius back to the dealership or cancel that order for the wind operated toilet – every little bit helps!

Wishing you good luck in going green.

Written by David Talbot and Roman Liedel, Eurosoft.

For more information, contact them at Eurosoft, Inc., 1628 Old Apex Road, Cary, NC 27513, 919-468-3003, Fax: 919-468-6374, E-mail: david@eurosoftinc.com, Web: www.eurosoftinc.com.