Impacts of the project on the Chinese foundry industry
Real savings
Resources – Energy - Raw-material - Water - Waste reduction - Quality improvement
Cleaner Production practices, being instructed in the workshop series and while the on-site trainings and project implementation caused financial savings, improved environmental performance, enhanced compliance and improved product quality.
In general CP measures in all core processes were developed and implemented. This was possible after a detailed assessment of the processes of each company, summarized in the CP reports.
The data assessment, production and consumption figures, waste analysis and the identification of process performance indicators, leaded to the development of many of the measures. The compilation of these figures was a big obstacle to most of the companies as they had only little documentation in place. For many it was the first time to evaluate process related consumption figures to enable them to have a kind of process controlling in place. Only with these controlling opportunities the evaluations of saving were possible. Still many companies struggle to daily record figures but with there increased know-how on process control they will finally succeed.
This controlling issue is one of the mayor problems within the industry and further efforts to increase controlling (on the management and facility level) must be taken to be competitive in the future. This CP project prepared the participating companies, the replication guideline, the textbooks and the CP report, distributed among other companies will contribute to the sustainable development of this important sector.
The savings generated in this project are listed below company by company (see more details in chapter 6.2). In general all companies improved their knowledge base on:
-
Good Housekeeping
-
Energy Efficiency
-
Sand Management
-
Best Practice and Technology need assessment
-
Improving product quality
-
Environmental Laws and Regulations
-
Operational Controlling
The improved skills of the core staff of the companies resulted in the described projects and in a general change of awareness in all of the companies with benefits for their economical, environmental and social aspects. Not all impacts on the company level are possible to evaluate at this point as CP is initiating a continuous improvement process leading to also many indirect benefits. In general CP is not only achieved by investing on new technology. The first step is to improve all processes and operations with, if possible, existing equipment and resources.
Nevertheless in this sector the up scaling of the technology is vital to sustain business.
The technical assessment gave a detailed profile of technology required to make the companies competitive for the decades. The assessment showed that safety and environmental aspects of the new technology are important for the companies as they see many regulative issues coming up. As well it gets clear that energy and material efficiency have priority as these are the cost factors of their products. The required degree of automatization, in comparison to the EU, is much lower due to problems with maintenance and operator skills. Manpower still counts a lot.
CAI has summarized the technology needed and has listed the possibilities were to get the equipment. The list is attached to the Annex.
Contribution to minimize the global impact on the environment
The project aimed to increase the capacity on many levels of the company while minimizing their environmental impact. The CP assessment allowed the definition of all significant environmental aspects and their related impacts of this sector and to find measures for improvement. The savings achieved - expressed in CO2 equivalents where possible - are contributing to the global efforts on environmental protection.