How making invisible waste visible can transform how factories operate

Industrial sustainability is no longer a distant concept; it’s a critical priority for manufacturers today. Professor Steve Evans from the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) believes that making invisible waste – like unused energy, water and materials – visible can transform how factories operate.

Just as people manage money more carefully when they can see it, manufacturers can manage their resources more effectively when they recognise where waste occurs. Here, we explore how shedding light on hidden inefficiencies is helping companies improve both their environmental impact and financial performance.

In the 1980s, some researchers believed that we had two centuries to tackle the issue of climate change. However, not everyone agreed with this prediction. Over the following decades, the persistent efforts of those who disagreed with this view helped to change perceptions.

Unfortunately, climate change continued to worsen during this time due to a lack of consensus and inadequate action. There is now a crisis for which society is unprepared, demanding a large-scale transformation of industrial systems. In 2011, Professor Steve Evans established the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) to facilitate this change, and he has since observed some promising developments.

“In even the very best companies, what was considered normal 20 years ago is now seen as absurd,” said Steve. “For example, factories would leave machines on overnight or over the weekend just to ensure the next job would be high quality. The best companies don’t do that anymore. At Toyota, an employee comes in a few hours early to ensure that the machines are operational for the shift. This practice saves them a lot of energy and money.”

Examples like Toyota highlight that there is a growing focus on sustainability in industry, but many manufacturers still need convincing to change their practices, especially when they cannot see their waste.

The case for industrial frugality

Energy waste often goes unnoticed, so it is an important area of focus for Steve and his colleagues in their work with industry. With renewable energy powering more than half of the electricity sold in the UK, it is not self-evidently a sound priority, as Steve explained: “If a manufacturer exclusively relies on renewable energy, one might assume that there is little incentive for them to conserve energy, other than to save money.

“However, this is not entirely true. Paradoxically, reducing energy consumption can be an effective strategy to reduce real CO2 emissions. When a manufacturer uses less energy, the overall energy demand in the industrial system decreases. In the UK, renewable energy has become cheaper to produce than fossil fuels, so it is more likely that fossil fuel providers will be impacted by lower demand than renewable energy providers will. Reducing the proportion of fossil fuels in the energy mix therefore makes sense from an economic perspective.”

With a view of the whole resource system, a frugal mindset is the only sensible option, according to Steve. Even on the materials side, there is work to be done to make that change: “Material waste should not be the biggest challenge for manufacturers because it is in their bins. You can physically see material waste if you bother, but most people don’t. Even in our homes, waste tends to become psychologically invisible once the bin lid goes down, so we need to be told to look for it.”

A material world

Manufacturing serves the purpose of producing material goods for consumers, and industry has the capacity to do so on a large scale. The sector’s history of pollution and industry’s connection to consumerism, however, may lead to the belief that manufacturing is incompatible with sustainability.

This belief is incorrect and fails to recognise that food, clothing, medicines, building materials and other essential items are all manufactured goods that we rely on. A sustainable industrial system is necessary to provide these goods to a global population of over eight billion people. Achieving sustainability requires increased innovative thinking and the implementation of solutions, rather than the closure of industries.

“It is hard to come up with general sustainability recommendations for manufacturers because they are so very different,” added Steve. “We can’t say, ‘do this to this machine, do that to your schedule, do this to compressed air.’ However, there is hope, because what we find works consistently is to show people that waste is happening.

“Each factory has its own toolkit for dealing with waste; we just need to show them that the waste is there. We find that we don’t have to teach them how to identify changes that will improve the situation. They’re already good at that, and that is really quite important. We must teach them how to see the waste so that they can tackle it.”

Because there is so much of it, waste is a very important part of the sustainability picture. However, it is also an easy place to start when a company wants to improve its environmental impact, and making sustainability easy is crucial. With good and accessible data, it is even easier.

Drawing with data

Dr Duanyang Geng recently completed his PhD at the IfM, under Steve’s supervision. Duanyang has been working for years to understand how industry uses data to conceptualise energy waste – one of manufacturing’s most elusive and widespread forms of waste. For his thesis, he interviewed 30 manufacturers about their energy use, trying to establish what they perceive energy waste to be and what they do to avoid it.

“There is no such thing as energy waste in nature,” said Duanyang. “Energy waste is intimately linked to human industrial practices, so it is up to us to define what separates energy waste from energy use. My many interviews informed my working definition of energy waste as whatever energy is used on top of what is strictly necessary to produce something.

“The invisibility of energy adds complexity here – manufacturers can’t physically see the energy they use, so they don’t automatically know where their benchmarks are. With digital tracking software, the kilowatt-hours, £/$ and CO2 equivalents can be made visible and translatable.”

As Duanyang observed, digital tracking software has real potential to help manufacturers, but it remains an underused resource, especially in small and medium sized (SME) manufacturers.

“Remember the hype around Google Glasses a few years ago?” Steve added. “Imagine putting on a pair in a factory and getting visual access to the energy use of machines in real time, as a symbol that changes in size according to energy spend, for example. Such instant visualisation of invisible waste could be a very powerful tool.”

Manufacturing a sustainable world

Industrial sustainability at the IfM goes beyond the work of the eponymous Centre for Industrial Sustainability. From using machine learning to tackle problems of wasted space on lorries, to making sophisticated use of additive manufacturing (3D printing), and helping SMEs to benefit from digital tracking tools, different groups are investing time in working to manufacture a more sustainable world. In various ways, they are bringing to light what industry and consumers overlook or ignore, providing simple solutions for improvement.