Company visits and on site consulting

The fact finding to the participating companies was carried out in the third week of March 2002. The information on the companies was collected by the project coordinator in coordination with the local experts. The information was then processed and informative company profiles of the participating companies were prepared and forwarded to the Austrian experts by March 25, 2002 by the local experts. On the basis of these company profiles preliminary amendments of the ECOPROFIT training materials, appropriate to needs of companies were made.

Each of the participating companies was visited by a team comprising of two Austrian experts, tow local experts, senior expert and the project coordinator from April 08 to 12, 2002 and April 15 to 16, 2002. The aim of the activity was to have first hand experience of the manufacturing activities being undertaken in the companies, with the basic idea of having one to one discussions for mutual understanding to initiate the ECOPROFIT concept. The visits were a great success as the experts got an insight to the actual situation and got to know the participants well, which enabled them to interact better during the workshops. Also the suggestions made by the experts were very well taken by the companies and some even took immediate actions to make improvements. Also it was felt that the sequence of the workshops needs to be rearranged looking onto the needs of the companies.

The Expert team visited participating companies in the period July 15 to 24, 2002 for the second time. The aim of the activity was to discuss the inputs provided by each of the company in the Environmental Reports and also to provide individual consulting on potential areas for these companies. After having the first hand experience of the companies activities in April, which has given the basic idea of the production process, there was a need to undergo detailed industrial process studies of all the participating companies and it was a time consuming task; that is why the second phase of the company visits was divided into two parts: seven companies were visited in July and detailed visit for rest of the companies was kept due for November. The basic idea of the visit this time was to know the exact production process, various input process streams, to find out the standardised process related figures about input as well as output streams, specific consumption at various stages, to know the key figures like energy supply sources, consumption, exact machinery requirements, etc. The visit was followed by brainstorming sessions with the company project team leader and other team members to discuss their specific process related problems and to suggest them the easy lying options for the improvement in the process (which experts had find out during the visit only) and various utilities of that company. Also the progress of the environmental report was always discussed at the time of the post visit brainstorming session.

The expert team visited the remaining participating companies, which they did not visit in July, in the period from November 05 to 22, 2002. The aim of the activity was again to discuss the inputs provided by each of the companies in the Environmental Reports and also to provide individual consulting on potential areas for these companies. In some of the industries the detailed production process was studied with an eye to find out the improvement options and the experts recommended to the project team members a few easy measures of improvements. Some of the companies were visited specifically to study and assist them on Energy and Mass Flow Analysis based on the information the EU experts had received & analysed while they were in Austria.

The Expert team visited selected participating companies in the period from January 09 to 11, 2003 for the fourth time. The aim of the activity was to discuss in detail the performance being carried out by these companies as a result of this project, also to provide specific technical inputs to the company and to dwell upon future plans.