The rare earth "connection"

Or, be careful what you ask for


At the very beginning of this blog I presented a number of postings on "why should industry care about green manufacturing." (see post) This included to minimize risk to the business due to supply chain problems for critical resources needed for production or other material related disruptions (like no material available.)

I came across a perfect example of this while traveling recently (and, hence, had access to the Financial Times and International Herald Tribune - neither of which I subscribe to.)

The October 7th edition of the Financial Times newspaper has an article entitled "China tightens its grip on the production of rare earths," written by Leslie Hook. Rare earths are a group of 17 minerals that have strategic applications in a wide range of products and processes. And they are hard to come by (hence the name "rare"!)

Of the earth's supply of these rare earth materials, 97% come from China, 2% come from India, and the remaining 1% come from "other" countries. The US used to be a producer of these materials but the mining and refining can be highly polluting if not properly controlled. So, costs of extraction and processing and environmental regulations encouraged the movement of production to places with lower costs and, regrettably, more lax restrictions or, at least, compliance.

So what? The use of these rare earths is ubiquitous in a wide range of high tech products, processes and products designed to reduce the environmental impact of operation. For example, the FT article cites the following statistics for use:

- 25% in automotive catalytic converters
- 22% in petroleum refining
- 10% in lighting, televisions, etc.
- 11% in materials for polishing glass and production of semiconductors
- 20% metallurgical additives and alloys
- 22% other

It turns out that these rare earths are key to "performance enhancing" materials and products important to us. For example,

- the rhodium in catalytic converters helps to remove harmful by-products of internal combustion engines (even highly fuel efficient ones)
- rare earths in "super magnets" help improve (a lot it turns out) the performance of electric motors in terms of power output with respect to input power (and remember that electric motors account for a major portion of electrical energy used to day - both domestically and industrially; and a number of the greening technologies (wedges) we've been discussing rely on improved electrical motor performance.)
- improved refinery techniques for less polluting fuels
- flat screen TV's and monitors with reduced energy consumption, and
- optical products ranging from specialized lenses for lithography and imaging applications to the bazillions of little lenses in cell phones and small cameras that a whole generation of young people are using to capture inane images of goofy behavior that will be posted on their social networking pages to impress their friends (and in 'cyberspace' in perpetuity) so that later in life when they want to get that dream job at a major corporation some recruiter can find it and say - not impressed. (Sorry, I got a bit carried away there - you get the point!)

The Chinese recently, and I assume entirely coincidentally with the Japanese detention of a Chinese fishing boat in disputed waters and the arrest of its captain, shut off the spigot of rare earths to the Japanese. And, thus the FT article I am referring to. Japan is the largest importer of rare earth materials.

Risk, you say?

Let's follow the trail of bread crumbs.

Japanese seize Chinese boat in disputed waters. Disputed, I believe, because of uncertain ownership following a conflict over 50 years ago precipitated by a country trying to, among other motives, secure sources of natural resources and energy (I am not a historian - if someone thinks I am off on my analysis let me know!). The Chinese interrupt the shipment of rare earth materials, materials needed to produce high tech products and enable processes to reduce the environmental impact of other processes and products. Companies relying on the supply of these materials see the supply chain stretching taut - panic thoughts emerge in heads of these companies (or at least in the supply chain manager.) Fortunately, the Japanese release the boat captain and materials, again by sheer coincidence, begin to flow again. Whew, close one.

How can a company watch out for an extemporaneous event on the high seas that might, in domino effect, interrupt its production?

I am reminded here of a great book (and BBC series) from some years back by a British author James Burke called "Connections."  Using some fascinating history sleuthing to "connect the dots" he shows along several lines the connection between technology development (and what is driving it) and commercial and political development. One line he followed was the nexus between precision engineering and fabrication techniques, the invention of the sea-worthy chronometer (previous instruments had suffered from the rolling action of ships, temperature variations, the high salty humidity of the air, and lower quality of fabrication to render them practically useless on long sea voyages), and the spread of British naval and commercial influence worldwide. Seafarers could now reliably get there and back with improved navigation aids and maps - all synchronized by accurate time keeping. Sort of a 18th century equivalent to GPS of today.

Today, we could build a similar story about anticipating and reducing risk in manufacturing.

I've a lot more to say about precision manufacturing and sustainability impacts prompted by some recent conversations I've had and remarks heard at conferences by industry leaders. More on that next time.

In the mean time, the world may be flat as Thomas Friedman points out, but some folks are sitting on mountains of critical resources, and the view from up their is decidedly different! Fortunately, as one of the Japanese researchers pointed out in the FT article, scarcity and risk of supply interruption drive innovation - in this case to find replacement, more commonly available, materials to substitute for the rare earths or ways to more efficiently use them. And the more the costs of these materials go up (remember, the market place rewards risk and uncertainty with higher material prices) the more incentive we have to find replacements or, in the case of the US which has reasonable wealth of these still in the ground, resume producing them with all the necessary safeguards and procedures in place.

That's a business strategy to reduce risk.

Finally, a comment from some time ago from one of the readers is appropriate to this discussion. It is complicated, so I am repeating the whole comment, and question posed from Steve Hanna following the post):

Let's say company "A" learns of a green house gas (GHG) "hot spot" in its supply chain, say manufacturer "X" of widgets.  Company "A" is purchasing substantial widgets from company "X" whose attributable production equals 80 tons of C02 emissions annually. Company "A" finds company "Y" who produces the same quality widgets (and pricing) that only takes company "Y" 1 ton of C02 emissions per year to produce. If company "A" decides to dump company "X" for company "Y", it is indeed a good steward to the earth but does company "A" receive any credit (offset or anything) for mitigating C02 emissions within its supply chain via Scope 3 indirect emissions?

In other words, are their any incentives/credits for companies who lean out their supply chains? After all, company "A" is mitigating 79 tons of C02 emissions from entering the atmosphere by switching to company "Y"'s product over the energy-intensive company "X" product. Can any of the savings be attributable to company "A"s footprint?

This is a great hypothetical and although I am not an expert on all the associated counting mechanisms over the different scopes, I have to say that I believe Company A can take credit for the reduction due to this switch. Certainly if they are tracking this in their annual corporate sustainability report (CSR) they can count this. And, specially in California where we are looking at how to identify and then, I assume, count GHG in products coming into the state.

But, there may be other opinions out there. Let Steve and I know  (i.e. comment!). I also like the concept of a GHG (or any other) "hot spot" as a way to identify sources of loss or potential savings in a process, facility or supply chain. And, apropos our discussion above, how about risk "hot spots"?

More on this next time also.

One last item, Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu has a blog! He is in government now but remember he was a Berkeley professor before! In his recent posting he commented on the need to revitalize American manufacturing. He starts out with "Some people think our economy can run on white collar and service jobs alone, but they are wrong. We can and must make high quality products in America. We are on the verge of a new Industrial Revolution and I believe it will revolve around the greatest untapped opportunity of our time, clean energy."

I couldn't agree more. The potential for manufacturing technology to address the emerging clean energy market (he continues talking about battery manufacturing), greener manufacturing technologies and facilities, and greener products manufactured in the US is huge.

Don't be distracted by the shiny bits

Or, is there any there, there?

When ever I am thinking of what would be a good topic to build the next posting around I never have to wait long till something pops up. This time…the peculiar intersection of celebrity and the environment.

Maybe you did not see this (it was hard to miss if you read even the mainline press) but a "musician" (or actually performance artist) named Lady Gaga showed up at a music awards program dressed in a "meat dress." You have to read this to believe it as reported by Ecouture magazine website. So, standing next to Cher wearing something "cher-like" is this celebrity covered in thinly sliced beef. The article comments that "the American chanteuse’s Atkins-approved getup, [was] made entirely of slabs of tenderloin, strip steak, flank steak, and rump roast (about $100 worth of the cheaper cuts, notes one New York butcher)." Who says there is no innovation in the US?!

Normally I'd let this one drop without comment but the firestorm of comments about the "environmental impact" (what about mental impact?!) was interesting. Pundits reacting pointing out the tremendous impropriety of this getup with perspectives ranging from "people are starving and she's wasting meat" to "do you know how much green house gas emissions are contributed by livestock production?" (Turns out a lot - according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization study reported a few years back - more than transportation.)

If one looks at climate change per ton of protein production (from the Ecouture article) she should have covered herself in peas or soy beans if she wanted to make an environmentally benign statement. Only lamb is worse than beef generating more than 100 tons of CO2 equivalent emission per ton of production.

The fashion industry has had a lot of problems finding the fine line between really sustainable products and the chic eco-fashion that looks good on paper (you know, organic cotton, recycled plastic, etc.) until you realize you could feed a family of 4 in many parts of the world for a year or more on the cost of the item.

Eco-not.

If you think I'm off on this, check out the Hungry Planet images posted on Time Magazine website showing what the world eats. The photos document the typical weekly food expenditures of a number of families around the world in local currency and dollars. The family in Chad spends $1.23 a week. Show this to your kids!

The first reasonable reaction to this whole event, the article and the response is - who cares?! When is the last time something truly significant, in terms of environmental impact (not withstanding the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster) received so much press? Wouldn't it be more useful (not to mention the environmental impact of all those computers on and users browsing the Lady Gaga article) to actually discuss things with a more potential impact?

This is actually sort of "green-washing" in reverse - meaning the trumping up of a minuscule environmentally impactful event or item with absolutely no potential to grow into something larger (do any of you see a trend to meat clothing?) into something important. This is almost worse than actual greenwashing (recall our discussion on this some postings long ago (July 10 of last year to be exact - see the post).

Just like it's wrong to overplay quasi-green (or non-existent green) aspects of a product or solution as part of the solution to sustainability, it is wrong to overblow a stunt act into something indicative of the future of the planet. Let's stay focused on what is actually something or, as they say, when "there is some there, there."

Also, just to clear any incorrect perceptions, I like meat (specially beef). I was born in Wisconsin and am happy to have farmers raising cows for milk and other uses in the food chain. My shoes contain leather. So, nothing against livestock here!

So, back to reality and some "there"!

As a follow up to our discussion about data flows (drinking from a firehouse), monitoring and dashboards for energy consumption, I mentioned that I visited the Bosch-Rexroth booth at the IMTS show the week before. They sent me some images from the display and this gives some substance to my "Google earth view of manufacturing" that has appeared a number of times in this blog (just search for the term in the box at the top of the blog page if you don't remember this.) At the lowest end of the "manufacturing view" was the machine with tooling and process details.

The figure below, from Bosch-Rexroth's MTX CNC Energy and Power Monitor for energy efficiency, shows the monitoring

strategy with the ability to identify the utilization, and losses, associated with power coming in at the bus, output to the motor, output to the mechanical shaft driving the machine tool (moving the workpiece relative to the cutting tool) and to track this in a dashboard, on an axis by axis basis including the consumption of auxiliary components. There is an article on this in the SME Manufacturing Engineering magazine of April, 2010 if you'd like some details. The figure below shows auxiliary consumption for hydraulics, fans/ventilation, cooling unit and spindle cooling.

With this level of detail associated with the process (what am I producing and how are the machine drives responding?) and the auxiliary components (when I'm not producing product what is my machine consuming? Is is worthwhile to shut some of this down while the machine is in changeover or idle?) the machine tool builder can consider alternate stratifies of machine operation and control, and the manufacturer can  (with suitable analysis tools) determine best practices for insuring part quality and minimum energy consumption.

Lots of data but a lot of digestion and presentation so we can handle the deluge...and make decisions.

Now this is worthy of some comments.

To end, I was reading the Economist (September 4, 2010) on a recent plane trip and they had an article titled "Ruses to Cut Printing Costs" with a byline that said "all kinds of technological tricks are being used to reduce the cost and environmental impact of office printers." I was intrigued. Turns out, people are doing all kinds of things to save resources which, for a laser printer (or ink jet), you can try to optimize "print vs toner" by choosing fonts which are thinner and use less toner or ink per character. The article quotes on source as stating that by switching to Century Gothic (which uses less ink) they saved $80/year/printer. The key was noticing that variability of ink/toner required per letter with different fonts!

Another company, a Dutch firm called Ecofont, came up with software to insert into fonts small holes in the letter that are not visible to the eye. This works best apparently on small fonts. They claim to be able to save 25% in the amount of ink or toner used. That's green!

And this is sort of the "office" equivalent of minimum quantity lubrication which reduces, dramatically, the amount of cutting fluid needed to machine a component. I mean reductions from thousands of liters to milliliters. We might discuss this some time in the future.

If your going to print the data from your firehose make sure it has holes in it!

And, finally, last, from the comment section, one commenter asked relative to my posting from the IMTS "did exhibitors or speakers address using the USGBC LEED program helping to provide assurance to end customers of verifiable improvements of manufacturing facilities?" Short answer, I did not see anything on this but, to be fair, was not looking for that angle. The focus of the show was on stuff in the building, not the building itself. Further, most manufacturers are just getting to grips with the operation, or use phase, consumption and not the embedded energy from materials, buildings, etc. used to produce the hardware. But that is coming.

Many companies have started working on the lighting, heating and ventilation, compressed air, etc. plant wide large scale energy consumers. But, there is much to be done. I'll check with some of my contacts to see if there are any examples of successful verifiable improvements. I am sure they are out there. Any readers can send me the contact info and I'll pass it on to the commenter or use the response section in the last posting  to respond directly.

Drinking from a firehouse, part 2

The greatest show on earth

This week I am writing from the IMTS in Chicago also known as the "greatest (manufacturing) show on earth" to paraphrase Barnum and Bailey. And it is a bit of a circus. Instead of rings you have several large halls chock full of the latest manufacturing technology (hardware and software) and every vendor who is anyone is here showing their stuff. Lot's of noise (machine and human), lot's of people, it's great.

So, what does this have to do with our firehouse analogy?

Let me elaborate. The "hidden" theme of this show is energy and resource consumption. The concern about energy monitoring, display and decision-making is pervasive. Not in the banner over the booth, but in the displays on the floor. Specially for the large control and motor/driver manufacturers like Fanuc, Siemens, and Bosch-Rexroth. They are all showing technologies for measuring and displaying energy data on controller or dashboards on computers.

Other companies are pushing the application of their machines and solutions to the growing alternate energy market - for example MAG is pushing production of wind and solar components, large and small, and OKUMA has a banner proclaiming "Solutions for Energy." Every one is seeing the push to reduce and the potential for market share in creating the solutions.

And why? Demand from customers, growing business opportunities and/or push back from people using their systems in production.

One of the people I have interesting discussions with about the trends of manufacturing and what's hot and what's not is a principal in a large high precision manufacturing company in the midwest. They have a range of clients from medical device to aerospace and the US Navy. To see their facility is to observe parts being made of tiny medical devices on a "Swiss" rotary transfer machine all the way to cowling components for surrounding the jet engines on the Airbus A380 giant airplane.

They also do work for companies like Johnson and Johnson and when I asked my friend if they are getting any serious push from their customers on energy he gave me a resounding YES!

Johnson and Johnson have a statement on their website, amongst a list of their expectations for the company's environmental performance, that their goal for External Manufacturing (ie my friend's company) is "100 percent of external manufacturers in conformance with Johnson & Johnson Standards for Responsible External Manufacturing by 2010." To date JNJ state that they have "shared our Standards and/or integrated these standards into formal contracts with more than  80 percent  of our external manufacturers by year-end 2007." Performance on the environment in the contract with their external manufacturers!

This means data…data on energy consumption of manufacturing…which means data from machines on performance cross linked to parts…meaning energy data linked to steps in the production of the part including on a line by line basis for the program code driving the machine tool in the case of material removal processes. This adds up to a lot of data - the subject of the last posting.

Recall that we had estimated that sampling energy data values for a "medium sized facility" for a day (here meaning 25 CNC machines, 10 programmable logic controlled machines and assorted other handling and line equipment with 8 data sources per machine at a sample rate of 5 hertz) would yield a data stream of 86,400,000 data points each day. And that if we added the other sources, we'd likely end up with 100 million data values a day to deal with.

So, let's continue our discussion from last time. Data can be related to events and information associated with those events. Thus, data can be understood as something that occurred either at a specific time or over a range of time. In manufacturing systems, events can be a numerical value (for example, the instantaneous power consumption at a specific time) or can be a type of annotation (for example, the alarm state of the machine tool over an interval). Complex events are abstractions of events that are created by combining simple events. For example, based on simple events pertaining to the tool position, the instantaneous power consumption, and the machine tool’s program in machining a part, we can create maps linking power and stages of part production.

The paper I referred to in the last posting describes what is called "events stream processing techniques" that include rules engines (RE) and complex event processing (CEP). These techniques can be used to create higher level abstract events and reason on them by pattern matching and identification. The figure below is an example of software architecture for temporal analysis. This spans multiple data

inputs from several devices, standardized data bus (e.g. MTConnect), and use of rules and complex event processing to create these "maps linking power and production."

My friend can use this to answer J&J's concerns about how much energy they are using to create the products they make. And, we can extend this to water, other resources, or whatever the customer wants tracked. And, knowing consumption is the first step to reduction.

The paper from part one of this posting went on to show the results of a case study applied to an energy
monitoring and analysis framework using energy consumption and process parameter profiles from machining experiments.

But at the show, Dr. Vijayaraghavan (the coauthor on the paper we were discussing in the last posting on data handling) and his company System Insights had a neat demo in the Mazak booth showing the real time implementation of this. On a website you can see, for a number of Mazak machine tools of varying sizes, the instantaneous power consumption. If you click on one of the machine icons you go to a "Mazak Energy Dashboard") for the machine (see below) and get the data, over time periods of

whatever you like for the operation of the machine. You can see total energy use (in kWh), energy cost (for the location you choose - US, Japan, Germany or, in the US, state by state), and "savings" relative to a benchmark machine test in the categories of energy, money (based on cost of energy), Co2 emission equivalent (based on the energy to CO2 conversion for the locality's energy mix) as well as that equivalent in terms of Al cans saved, miles of auto driving or use of compact fluorescent lamps. And, it has in the lower right hand corner an cool real-time power meter readout.

A further chart from that machine window shows real time power plot over time and summary info, shown below for the Integrex i200S Mazak machine tool. The summary numbers are a bit

different in the two figures as I accessed the data on the website at different times as I was preparing this posting. If we dig deeper, as in the figure last posting September 6th on examples of analysis across temporal scales, we can see the ability to correlate power with specific machine motions. That is next on the dashboard.

This starts to convert our firehouse of data into rather manageable mouthfuls!

I visited the Bosch-Rexroth booth and they were showing similar information albeit, in this case, from a specific set of servos driving a machine simulator.

It's happening. Data flows will increase. Are you thirsty?!

Drinking from a firehose

Or, data collection for energy and resource monitoring

I mentioned last posting that I was attending a manufacturing conference in Italy the end of August and that there was a lot more discussion about some aspects of green and sustainable manufacturing - at least efficient use of energy.

This is supported by business surveys and comments in the business press reflecting, I assume, the interaction with business folks "in the know" on such matters. A recent McKinsey special topics report  titled "The next environmental issue for business" gives some interesting statistics on what matters most to business. The report actually was focused mainly on biodiversity and the importance that holds i the minds and hearts of business. We can get back to that topic in the future (and read the report…it is interesting).

I was intrigued by the more general data given in the McKinsey report on issues of importance to business (and based on a responses of almost 1600 survey takers). The top vote getter was "climate change/energy efficiency" coming in at 43%. next in line was "waste/pollution/recycling" with 42%. Following that was "water scarcity/water quality/sanitation at 27%. There are 10 other categories of issues ranging from data privacy to global public health. And, "biodiversity" was 10th on the list. Another "environmental" related concern was toxic materials at 14%. (Note: the respondents ranked a number of issues; so, the percentages will not add to 100!)

I was pleased to see the top three as close to our topic of green manufacturing since they deal with, in order, energy we use and its impact, things we throw away/waste and things from the environment used to make our product besides energy - here water.

Water is often overlooked in all the concern about energy. Not by everyone however! Caterpillar has a goal of "hold[ing] water use flat" as they increase their business listed in their 2009 Corporate Sustainability Report. The website (link to report) gives a short discussion of Cat's plan to determine the "true cost of water" and includes the following statement:

"Without good data it is impossible to justify the cost of water-saving initiatives."

They go on to explain how a program in 2009 at one of Caterpillar’s American plants launched a program "to quantify how much water it was using in its different processes, and the costs associated with water use in each process – including water bills, chemicals, labor, maintenance and energy. The project helped the plant identify its most expensive water processes and associated costs and justified the capital expenditure needed to implement savings."

They plan to extend this program to other Caterpillar facilities in 2010.

Good data … and plenty of it!

Ditto for energy, other resources, etc. throughout the factory.

In the manufacturing conference in Italy I attended, the CIRP General Assembly, I presented a paper co-authored with one of my recent graduate students, Dr. Athulan Vijayaraghavan, titled "Automated Energy Monitoring of Machine Tools." The full reference is "CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 59 (2010) 21–24." (Let me know if you'd like a copy.)

This paper laid out the immense challenges associated with trying to acquire, store and process the streams of data from a variety of machines in a variety of systems throughout a variety of factories. This is done in the hope of, first, understanding where energy (in this case) and other resources (like water) are used and then how to meet the kind of goals the Caterpillar folks are aiming at. This means, understanding the nexus between process operation and resource use to be able to find ways to minimize the use per unit of output. That is, decouple the process and resource equation so we can effectively reduce the "impact/GDP" discussed a few postings back to reduce overall impact of manufacturing.

We focussed on only the machine tool…but the approach can be extended much more broadly.

If you think about making this "connection" between resource consumption and process, you need to first determine the rate of data you need to make the link. For energy, this can range from parts of seconds to hours.

You may recall our discussion some postings ago (January 21, 2010 to be exact) about "temporal vs spatial" aspects of manufacturing. We can create a similar diagram to illustrate this discussion of data rate

demands for tracking energy and resource use. The figure highlights the data rates for machine tools but, for broader sections of the enterprise, you can see the time scale also. The idea is you need sufficiently high data rates to capture the process effects or variability you are trying to associate the use with. Then, we can see how adjusting those parameters or variations can yield savings (without, of course, sacrificing quality or cost.)

Here is another illustration from the paper showing the use of energy in the context of the manufacturing process. The objective is to have data rates "tuned" to the process so one can extract such

            Time scale of data collection for energy use in the context of manufacturing process

information as:

- energy usage per day (lot or batch basis),
- embedded energy during manufacturing a part (piece basis),
- energy used for value-added and non-value-added activities (between productive operations),
- relationship between spikes/troughs and process parameters (details of process operations),
- impact of process parameters on sub-component loads (what's going on around the machine or line), and
- energy used for machining specific part features (related to part design/geometry and functionality.)

This information depends on vastly differing data rates with sampling times varying from milliseconds to minutes.

The data volumes can be impressive. In the paper we give a sample of the number of energy data values for a "medium sized facility" for a day. This facility is comprised of 25 CNC machines, 10 programmable logic controlled machines and assorted other handling and line equipment. For the CNC machines alone, assuming 8 data sources per machine at a sample rate of 5 hertz (5 times/second), we will have a data stream of 86,400,000 data points each day. If we add the other sources, with reasonable numbers of data collection sites and data rates, we would likely end up with over 100 million data values a day to deal with.

Drinking form a firehouse indeed!

So, what's the solution?

The paper proposes a structure for, first, standardizing data (for example using MTConnect), implementing a modular, scalable architecture that supports multiple concurrent data streams and sources and, importantly, employs multi-dimensional reasoning tools.

There is more to discuss on this but this is more than we can cover in one posting. I'll finish the discussion next time.

If you are interested in this approach in the mean time, Dr. Vijayaraghavan has a company working on the hardware and software aspects of this - System Insights. They are already working with a number of companies and will be demoing some of their solutions at the upcoming IMTS (International Manufacturing Technology Show) in Chicago later this month. (In interest of full disclosure, I am an advisor to System Insights.)

By the way, the IMTS is the "mother of all manufacturing shows" and I plan to attend to check out what the view on green manufacturing is from the show floor.

The next blog will be from Chicago!

Lead, follow or get run over!

Standards for environmental performance in manufacturing

I was attending a manufacturing conference in Italy this last week and one of the major topics of discussion was green and sustainable manufacturing. There are a lot of other topics to be sure - but this one is building steam. The discussions range from process level issues, similar to the ones we've been discussing, to systems approaches, to design and, at one session, standards.

Not surprisingly, the standards associations (think ISO) have been busy and also, not surprisingly, the Europeans and Asian industry and some academics have been very busy as part of the standards process.

That light you see coming toward you in the tunnel is not the exit!

Let me elaborate.

The standards under development cover environmental and energy efficiency evaluation methods. Specifically, Professor F. Kimura of Hosei University in Japan outlined the work on ISO 20140 "Automation systems and integration – Environmental and energy efficiency evaluation method for manufacturing systems." According to Professor Kimura, who is participating in the standards development process, the environmental evaluation can focus on either a general environmental "intensity" at a rather high level for a facility or be more specific in nature.

I gather that the difference refers to whether or not a generic product being manufactured or system is evaluated. The system evaluation would apply to a comparison of improvements to a system, say by a change in the process or reconfiguration of a machine line or facility. Measurements might include energy per unit production, waste of materials, etc. For the evaluation of benefits or limitations to the production of a specific part or parts in factories located in different countries, there is provision of a general or specific evaluation of environmental intensity of products in manufacturing.

In the language of ISO,  this international standard establishes a method for evaluating environmental influences of manufacturing systems, e.g. energy/resource consumption and pollution.

The standard consists of five parts:
- ISO 20140-1:  Overview and general principles
- ISO 20140-2:  Guidelines for environmental evaluation procedures (this establishes procedures for environmental evaluation and will guide how to use parts 3 to 5)
- ISO 20140-3:  Environmental evaluation index model (this specifies the models for environmental indices, e.g. energy efficiency for manufacturing systems index)
- ISO 20140-4:  Environmental evaluation data model (this specifies data models for the environmental evaluation of manufacturing systems)
- ISO 20140-5:  Facility life cycle impact and indirect impact model (this specifies data models for a facility life cycle's direct and indirect impact on the environment)

To enable this environmental evaluation of manufacturing systems, various types of data from the manufacturing activity will be needed. Standards help to clearly define this data so that it can be used to perform unambiguous environmental evaluations. If there is generally accepted environmental intensity data for unit processes already available, that can also be used in the evaluation.

Much of the data related with manufacturing system definition and operation have been already standardized in related international standards. These existing standards will be included for use and, where necessary, extended.

Professor Kimura described some examples of the categories of likely required data:

- Manufacturing machine/facility (machine tools, conveyers, etc.),
- Tooling and jigs/fixtures,
- Energy,
- Materials,
- Product (definition, quality, function, etc.),
- Process plan,
- Production plan,
- Other production resources,
- Environmental evaluation data (intensity data, impact factors, etc.),

Based on these data, evaluation procedures of environmental index can be clearly defined. According to the definition of data format, it becomes possible for public organizations and machine/facility producers to publish their data. By relying on such published data in  standard formats, reliable and unambiguous environmental evaluation is realized. It also ties in with other existing standards.

For example, there are standards being developed on "Environmental evaluation of machine tools" (ISO/TC 39/WG 12). This is being developed by researchers at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich. They had a first meeting in May of this year and are working on an ISO series 14955 on this evaluation.

One can find a lot of information about this effort on the web by searching the technical committee (here ISO/TC39/WG12). One link to the Eco Machine Tools stakeholder meeting has several presentations on the elements of this standard.

Professor W. Knapp of ETH is leading this effort. He is a precision manufacturing engineering expert and very familiar with machine tools and their performance. They anticipate four areas of focus for this standard:

- ISO 14955-1, Eco-design methodology for machine tools

- ISO 14955-2, Methods of testing of energy consumption of machine tools and functional modules

- ISO 14955-3, Test pieces/test procedures and parameters for energy consumption on metal cutting machine tools

- ISO 14955-4, Test pieces/test procedures and parameters for energy consumption on metal forming machine tools

The functional modules will allow a certain degree of detail related to energy consumption, for example, the spindle, or drive axes, etc. It was noted that this will only address "use phase" energy - meaning, embedded energy due to raw material extraction, production of the machine or component, transports, set up and end of life energy requirements are ignored. For most of these machines the use phase is dominant.

One of the interesting aspects of these standards activities is the scope. This last standard mentioned will provide guidelines for designing machine tools to meet certain efficiency goals, and then indicate what kinds of parts (shape, complexity, processes needed) to evaluate how well the machine does! The earlier standard will set up a procedure and data requirements for doing comparisons. This will provide a basis of determining whether or not the suggested improvement, or relocation of a facility, will be beneficial environmentally.

One of the illustrations from a presentation made by the ETH folks as part of the TC 39/WG 12 discussion of the standard outlines the system boundaries for the analysis, see figure below. This

defines what inputs and outputs will come into play. Note, in the fine print below the figure, that raw parts in, new tools, etc. and output of machined parts, etc. are not considered if they don't represent a relevant energy flow (figure from Hagemann_Statusreport_ISO found on the stakeholder link above.)

A lot of the motivation for these standards comes out of the CECIMO organization in Europe. They describe themselves on their website as "CECIMO represents the common interests of the European Machine Tool Industries, particularly in relation to authorities and associations. CECIMO promotes the European Machine Tool Industry and its development in the fields of economy, technology and science."

Remember the early discussions about what motivates green manufacturing? I mentioned one was regional organizations - like CECIMO.  The industry is taking the initiative on this.

In the future, we will be designing and building machines and systems to meet these standards. And our factories producing products will be assessed using these standards.

Once again, the "Everett and Jones" philosophy (http://green-manufacturing.blogspot.com/2009/11/stylish-longevity.html) comes into play! Let's not be in the "what happened" category on this one.

I don't intend to. I'm going to follow this one closely and, as "unexciting' as standard development can be, this will be interesting!

We'll keep an eye on the standards activity and I will likely offer more details in the future.

A final point about technology and its impact on energy and the environment.

At another meeting I attended this summer, this one for the Machine Tool Technology Research Foundation (MTTRF) Dr. Masahiko Mori, President of Mori Seiki, gave an interesting presentation on where green product developments will likely impact manufacturing (and, by extension) green manufacturing. He cited some data from Nikkei Monodukuri on the number of parts in an engine for a conventional automobile versus a motor for an electric vehicle - 10,000 to 30,000 vs approximately 100, respectively!

This may seem like a simplistic comparison … but consider the complexity and impact of designing, manufacturing, storing or transporting and assembling 10,000 parts (not to mention the material issues and the building/floorspace requirements) compared to around 100.

This is an example of efficient resource utilization.

Of course there are the other bits needed to make the electric vehicle run - like a battery - but, overall, these are much simpler mechanical devices and will require fewer resources to build and, presumably, be easier to disassemble at end of life to recover the materials.

That's one way to do it!

Or, how to encourage conservation and save energy

A recent New York Times article discusses the draconian measures being taken by the Chinese government to make the nation more energy efficient ("China Fears Consumer Impact on Global Warming," K. Bradsher, NYT, July 4, 2010). In the last three years China has shut down more than a thousand older coal-fired plants and leads the rest of the world in investment on wind turbines and other clean technology according to the article. In addition, new, stringent, requirements for energy use and auto mileage are in place. But, the concern is that the growing demand of Chinese consumers will overwhelm even these efforts at green house gas (GHG) reduction. Apparently, this last winter and spring showed the largest six-month increase in GHG tonnage ever produced by a single country.

So, swing the ax at the low performers. That's one way to do it.

The NYT articles states that "China’s goal has been to reduce energy consumption per unit of economic output by 20 percent this year compared with 2005, and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent in 2020 compared with 2005."

Recall the "equation" for calculating impact first discussed in the September 1, 2009 posting? It states that:

Impact = Population x (GDP/person) x (Impact/GDP)  where GDP stands for gross domestic production

The challenge in China is that, in addition to population growth with time, the increasing standard of living is driving GDP/capita up and, as was noted in September 2009, unless you can reduce the Impact/GDP (that is, the role of manufacturing, energy generation and resource utilization) sufficiently, you will see the impact necessarily rise.

What is "sufficient"? Well, to close the gap between sustainable use of resources and the business as usual level (the chart that grows "up and to the right" for consumption and impact) you need to accomplish both a reduction in impact/GPP to track the required emissions and consumption trends but also reduce the impact/GDP to offset the growing demand of more and more consumers. It is sort of like trying to pay off a mortgage in an inflationary market when you are constantly taking out equity loans on top of the original mortgage. (Gee, we know how that works out!)

So, what to do? One approach is that used by China.

We are not likely to do that in the US. But, if you do business (or want to do business) in China your products may be affected by these regulations and decisions.

What about in the US? A recent Environmental Leader posting, July 15, 2010, on "Gov Contractors Must Track Emissions or Risk Losing Contracts" adds to the discussion. The article states "Contractors for the federal government that do not track their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could risk losing their contracts, according to a report in the Federal Times about new rules by the General Services Administration (GSA)."

It goes on to say that these rules result from the "GSA’s response to an executive order … issued in October which directed federal agencies to find ways to reduce their GHG emissions. Potentially, the new rules could have far-reaching consequences through the entire economy, not just government contractors."

Apparently, "only" scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting would be required, meaning emissions generated by employee commuting and business travel are not included. (We discussed emission scope reporting requirements in a prior posting.)

Given the large role of manufacturing industry serving as government contractors, this could have a big impact.

First, determine what impact your process has (at least energy to GHG conversion) and then roll out the green technology wedges!

So we may need to respond to consumer pressure or, more likely in the short term,  some form of regulation or standardization.

Some may call this taxes of some type. Or at least it has the effect of taxes to many. This is not too popular. I was reminded of Dan Rostenkowski, long time bull of the congress and head of House Ways and Means Committee, who died recently. He headed the committee that wrote most of the tax laws in the UA and he was famously quoted one time as saying "no one calls me up and asks me to raise their taxes!"

Cap and trade, or carbon trading, is often pointed to as one of the "taxes" that will impede industry (while promoting utilization of green technologies for manufacturing.) Another article on Environmental Leader's site calls that into question however. It is not simple. Apparently European Union (EU) companies are offsetting their emissions by improving the competitiveness of their competitors offshore through these carbon credit purchases (!) - so-called "leakage" - moving their business outside the EU. But, it doesn't appear to be increasing outsourcing of business overall according to other reports.

The article gives a neat site by Sandbag that shows a map illustrating the international trade in offsets between the EU and the rest of the world in 2009.

Programs like cap and trade, or regulation, or industry norms adopted to improve the impact of a specific industry all move us towards greener manufacturing. They occur because of competitiveness of countries and regions, real concerns about environment, customer demand, or just plain good economic or business sense.

Apropos that last comment about good business sense, I mentioned in a posting recently the comments of Jeff Immelt of GE on greening industry. He said that "with respect to companies like GE that want to stay ahead of the curve in terms of investing to maintain competitiveness and profitability,  … it’s going to change in like, 15 minutes one day.”  “I guarantee that’s going to happen.” He followed on commenting that since no one can predict when this will happen - you have to plan for this in your business strategy.

Regulation and industry norms take time. Breakthroughs in technology or process improvements can occur instantly. Be ready!

Degrees of Perfection, Part 4

Last of a 4 part series

We've been talking about exergy (or available energy and useful work) as part of this series. Last posting I reviewed the work of Professor Tim Gutowski of MIT on energy fundamentals in manufacturing. We'll continue along this line for this last in the series with an example from Professor Gutowski's work.

This series has generated some good comments and feedback. One pointed out a mistake in the previous posting (already corrected!) when I used the word "irreversibly" in place of reversibly - the correct word. This was in the quote from Gutowski's paper stating that exergy "represents the maximum amount of work that could be extracted from a system as it is reversibly brought equilibrium …" That is an important catch … sort of like using "nonpotable" for "potable." Thanks to that careful reader. More on some of the other comments below.

Now, on to an example.

Last time we spoke of a "typical" manufacturing system represented by a series of "boxes and arrows" connected serially and representing the individual processes and the connecting material transport between processes. We stated that we can replace (or augment) these arrows between boxes (or going into the box) with the systems mass, energy and entropy interactions. That means that each stage of a process can will have material flows or interactions as well as work and heat interactions. And there will be losses.

An earlier paper by Professor Gutowski used electrical energy in manufacturing from an energy perspective. The paper is titled "Electrical Energy Requirements for Manufacturing Processes and it was published in the Proceedings of the 13th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference in 2006. You can find this publication on the web - it is number 23 under environmental publications.

In the last posting we talked about using exergy as a metric of performance. Gutowski tackles that in this paper.

Gutowski explains as a setup to the analysis that energy measures the potential of all materials to do work. "Fuels naturally have high values of exergy, but many other working materials, including pure metals, plastics and other organics, can have since we can then express these material and energy inputs and outputs in the same unit, usually joules (J).

He goes on. "Secondly, since the development of the concept of exergy is based upon the second law of thermodynamics, and not the first, it is not conserved. Hence this metric provides a measure of what is actually “used up” in the manufacturing process. As a result, a complex energy and material flow problem can be substantially simplified by using exergy analysis."

The process is broken up into two steps:
- 1) identify the system boundaries (that is the limits of the "box" we are analyzing, and
- 2) identify the exergy inputs and outputs.

Then, the difference between the inputs and the outputs is the exergy lost.

The paper explains that this "difference" can be used to "account for material transformations, including the conversion of raw working materials into products, wastes, and emissions, and the conversion of fuels (through combustion) into heat (to do work), wastes, and emissions." One can also extend the concept to incorporate all other energy sources, for example hydro, solar, electrochemical, and others.

Typically, we would consider the conversion of fuel (such as oil, coal or natural gas) to generate electricity which is then used in the manufacturing process for material conversion by, say, machining, grinding, welding, forming, forging, etc. As pointed out in an earlier posting on the variations of impacts depending on differing fuels for energy in different parts of the world, the exact fuel to energy relationship will vary.

The paper reminds us that to be fully consistent, we should take in to consideration the energy used to produce the materials we are "transforming" and, as this blog has argued, include the manufacture of the machinery to do the transforming as well.

The figure below, from Gutowski's paper, illustrates the energy and material inputs and outputs for a manufacturing process. This is a streamlined version of the input-output example discussed on the November 12th posting discussion whether or not lean is green and you can refer to that for additional background on "what's in the box." The example

followed in the paper deals with an automobile production machining line. As we've discussed in earlier postings, the machines used in these manufacturing lines have a number of elements and components that operate in parallel with the actual processing operation. For example, in the paper we are discussing, Gutowski mentions work handling, chip removal and treatment (removing oil) for recycling, tool changes, machine axis and spindle lubrication and temperature control, etc. in addition to actually machining the part. The figure representing this data for a typical automotive manufacturing machining line is below, from Gutowski, and shows the energy use breakdown as a function of vehicles produced.

So, as with our "tare heavy" and production "process heavy" discussion some postings ago) - this is an excellent example of tare heavy manufacturing. Here, a maximum of about 15% of the energy actually goes into machining the part. Granted, this is for a production line so there will be some expenditures of energy that might not be seen with a standalone machine tool. But, this is not very good.

One of the observations of the paper is that there is a variation with production rate. In fact, for standalone machine tools which may actually reach 60% or 70% energy usage for machining (and, thus, 40% or 30% for "all other") this maximum utilization varies with production rate as well. The takeaway is that, in production, there is a significant energy consumption for getting the machine ready for production and maintaining the machine (or line) readiness in the face of fluctuating production.

A more important observation from my perspective is that trying to estimate the energy consumption of manufacturing processes by looking only at the physical process (and the physics behind it - like metal cutting and the energy to form a chip, for example) will tell you almost nothing about the total energy consumption.

So what does this say about our "buy to fly ratio" analysis? To me, this is still a good way to characterize the efficiency of the process. In the example above (and under the assumptions detailed in the paper - the "academic fine print"!) we are utilizing at most 15% of the available energy coming into the process. That is, the transformation part of the manufacturing process is overwhelmed by the peripheral activities and requirements of the machine.

This is precisely what we were speaking about in our "low hanging fruit" discussion referenced above and what is motivating a lot of current development work by builders of and users of manufacturing machinery.

More on this to come.

Finally, one of the more prolific commenters to the blog talked about standardizing "by volume the process by which inputs, energy included, are transformed into outputs." A visual thinker! She goes on to say that with this approach "the perfect shape would be a cylinder, where all the outputs are useful, for nature, for humans or for both. The current processes are truncated cones with different "buy-to-fly" ratios symbolized by the ratio between the two bases. The cylinder's ratio is the perfect 1, no volume is lost."

The thought that came to mind when I read this was Rick Steves packing for a long trip on one of his adventures. He always seems to be wearing the same shirt and carries only a small backpack. How does he do that? If true, his "buy to fly" ratio must be close to cylindrical! That's perfection.

And, in the world of twitter - I learned of one called “50 Best Twitter Feeds To Stay On Top Of Green News”. The writer thought some of the blog readers might find it interesting. So, happy twittering!