Sheet metal manufacturer, the Harlow Group, has used energy management specialist Ecopare to analyse its energy consumption, identify energy reduction opportunities and guide its capital equipment investment decisions.
Using Ecopare’s Lean Energy Management solution, Harlow Group was able to identify electricity and gas usage per manufacturing workstation and individual pieces of capital equipment. These included the laser cutters, nitrogen production plant, air-compressors, welding bays, presses and the powder coat plant.
The projects outcome included; energy savings, effective maintenance, measuring return on investment, major investment in new technology and increased capacity.
Electricity costs have been reduced by £25,000 a year, this was achieved by installing a new heating system and low-energy lighting. As well as reducing the weekend energy base load and implementing a formalised ‘shut down’ policy for a number of the capital assets.
The Harlow Group is implementing a preventative maintenance plan, focused on the most expensive and newest equipment.
A new system was installed to monitor and optimise the performance of existing equipment. This revealed that the, one of the laser technologies used had running costs of just 10% that of the other.
The project also helped Harlow Group with its capital investment decisions. It assessed two of the technologies it used and found that the routine energy running costs of one technology were about 10% of the other. It measured the whole-life costs and, as a result, invested more than £500,000 in an Amada fibre laser and automatic sheet loader.
The new Amada fibre laser machine is three times more efficient than the previous one, and its higher processing speeds will increase capacity and the range of materials that can be cut to include copper, brass and titanium.
– See more at: http://www.engineeringcapacity.com/news101/business-news/ecopare-and-harlow-group-project#sthash.oq6ItVSB.dpuf
