Workforce Development Opportunities Through the Better Buildings, Better Plants Program are Working to Drive Industrial Energy Efficiency

The Better Buildings, Better Plants (BBBP) Program, the successor to Save Energy Now LEADER, is working with a growing number of program partners to reduce energy intensity in U.S. manufacturing. A strong focus of BBBP is workforce development and the program is accomplishing this by performing in-plant trainings at program partners’ facilities.

These three-day in-plant workshops include a joint assessment between plant personnel and independent experts on crosscutting industrial systems such as steam, process heating, or motor-driven systems. This helps plant personnel learn by doing and enables a more meaningful way to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements. So far, there have been 149 participants across eight trainings where more than 740,000 MMBTU/year in potential energy savings and $4 million in energy cost savings were identified at the host plants. One such training in April 2012 focused on process heating systems at Nissan North America’s Canton, Mississippi, assembly plant. Approximately $2 million in annual savings were identified; many improvements having low payback periods.

Collaboration: The Key to Identifying Energy Savings

A key benefit of the in-plant workshops is the level of collaboration among participants. The collaboration between a cross-functional team of plant personnel, management and independent experts helps focus on a wider variety of energy efficiency opportunities as participants work together to identify solutions based on their collective past experiences—both the pitfalls and successes of various approaches and methods. This conversation also extended to discussions on methods to ensure that energy-saving initiatives were not misunderstood to compromise quality, safety, or morale. This teamwork allows the experiences at plants across diverse companies to be leveraged as the best approach is shared and implemented.

Attendees at the Nissan workshop included plant personnel from Alcoa, ArcelorMittal, Schneider Electric, Volvo Trucks, Toyota, CEMEX, Total Petrochemicals, and 3M —representing a cross section of manufacturers as well as members of Nissan’s supply chain. According to Steve Schultz, Corporate Energy Manager for 3M Company, “this in-plant training allowed us to see how plant engineers from different companies can work with each other. We intend to host a similar workshop in the future.”

As with other in-plant trainings the April workshop included a pre-training webinar, a classroom session that focuses on AMO software tools and an introduction to ISO 50001, and field training in which the attendees worked with the expert to collect and analyze energy data and determine potential energy-saving measures. At the workshop’s conclusion, Nissan found some opportunities identified in the assessment that they could implement fairly soon and took steps to upgrade lighting while more resource and time intensive measures are being evaluated and researched.

Sharing Best Practices Beyond the Plant

Nissan North America committed itself to the Better Buildings, Better Plants Challenge – one of the two program tracks. Participants in the BBBP Challenge have the same commitment for a 25% energy intensity reduction across their corporation as the BBBP partners, but as a BBBP Challenge partner, Nissan has committed to sharing their energy efficiency experience with other industrial stakeholders. In Nissan’s case, this sharing has extended beyond industry to local schools where Nissan provides energy-efficiency expertise as the school’s energy performance is being evaluated and recommendations for improvement are being made.

As industrial companies consider energy-efficiency, workforce development can go a long way in uncovering opportunities and empowering manufacturing plant staff to establish energy management systems and implement energy efficiency measures. The in-plant trainings offered by the BBBP program provide the collaborative framework that can share meaningful lessons from peers and independent energy experts that provide important insights and confidence in various energy efficiency improvements. These insights can allow management to accord a higher priority to energy efficiency including improvements to process operations.