How Alcoa Canned the Cost of Recycling

Alcoa is one of the world?s largest aluminium smelting and casting multinationals, and involves itself in everything from tin cans, to jet engines to single-forged hulls for combat vehicles. Energy costs represent 26% of the company?s total refining costs, while electricity contributes 27% of primary production outlays. Its Barberton Ohio plant shaved 30% off both energy use and energy cost, after a capital outlay of just $21 million, which for it, is a drop in the bucket.

Aluminium smelting is so expensive that some critics describe the product as ?solid electricity?. In simple terms, the method used is electrolysis whereby current passes through the raw material in order to decompose it into its component chemicals. The cryolite electrolyte heats up to 1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F) and converts the aluminium ions into molten metal. This sinks to the bottom of the vat and is collected through a drain. Then they cast it into crude billets plugs, which when cooled can be re-smelted and turned into useful products.

The Alcoa Barberton factory manufactures cast aluminium wheels across approximately 50,000 square feet (4,645 square meters) of plant. It had been sending its scrap to a sister company 800 miles away; who processed it into aluminium billets – before sending them back for Barberton to turn into even more wheels. By building its own recycling plant 60 miles away that was 30% more efficient, the plant halved its energy costs: 50% of this was through process engineering, while the balance came from transportation.

The transport saving followed naturally. The recycling savings came from a state-of-the-art plant that slashed energy costs and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Interestingly enough, processing recycled aluminium uses just 5% of energy needed to process virgin bauxite ore. Finally, aluminium wheels are 45% lighter than steel, resulting in an energy saving for Alcoa Barberton?s customers too.

The changes helped raise employee awareness of the need to innovate in smaller things too, like scheduling production to increase energy efficiency and making sure to gather every ounce of scrap. The strategic change created 30 new positions and helped secure 350 existing jobs.

The direction that Barberton took in terms of scrap metal recycling was as simple as it was effective. The decision process was equally straightforward. First, measure your energy consumption at each part of the process, then define the alternatives, forecast the benefits, confirm and implement. Of course, you also need to be able to visualise what becomes possible when you break with tradition.

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Energy efficiency demystified

Energy bills are all about Energy efficiency but energy efficiency management is not all about bills. Energy efficiency means reducing carbon emissions, lowering energy costs and improving the quality of life. Energy efficiency is therefore about conservation of energy in a broader perspective; in fact energy efficiency is almost becoming a moral obligation.

Through adoption of appropriate energy efficiency measures, companies can significantly bring down the overhead costs making hundreds of dollars in savings. Energy efficiency is also synonymous with a better quality of life. Taking appropriate measures to ensure proper insulation protects your premises against extreme weather conditions leading to more productivity and an improvement in the bottom line.

Improved energy efficiency means a smaller amount of carbon emissions, less pollution and a better environment.

It is now easier than ever to visually identify where your facility is wasting energy, how much energy is being wasted while tracking the progress made in reducing energy consumption by turning that detailed, raw energy-consumption data into useful charts and figures.

Having visibility of your Energy usage gives you knowledge of what power you are consuming. This helps you change energy usage behaviours and this can have significant savings and reduction in your electricity bills. Real-time electricity consumption tracking is enough prodding for you to be on the lookout for inefficient energy consumption unit’s e.g.? Heating and cooling equipment, ducts insulation of your premises or a failure of one of these components to perform as intended. Pin-pointing the problem areas is not a walk in the park but fixing it can make your building more energy-efficient and comfortable.

A wide range of solutions are now available for charting and analysing energy consumption that helps energy managers, facilities managers, energy consultants and building-services engineers. These will not only offer advice but will enable you provide tailor made solutions for your organisation by assisting you in developing a sustainable energy strategy. Our energy monitoring software is one example.?

4 Reasons Why You Might be Missing Out on Energy Savings…

?well your company actually, although for many small-to-medium businesses it boils down to the same thing. Governments usually lag behind in terms of innovation but are beating us hands-down when it comes to going green. I have heard that private sector energy savings average less than 1% per year and I for one would not be surprised if that were true. So what is causing this rot, when we started out so enthusiastically? Here are four possibilities for you to mull over.

Your Team is Unevenly Yoked ? A pair of mismatched horses cannot pull a wagon in a straight line any more successfully than a business team can achieve its goals, if there is no agreement on priorities. While your sales team may be all for scoring green points against your competition, your accountant has a budget to balance and your operations department just wants to get on with the job.

Energy?s not in Focus ? The above may in part be due to production goals you set your department heads. Energy is not nearly as greedy as raw materials and human capital. If you tell them to cut 5%, where do you think they are going to look first? You need to put energy savings up there, and agree specific targets as you do with other primary goals.

Your Equipment Could be Over-Spec ? It is a very human thing to put more food on our plates and buy faster cars than we need. Only a few generations ago our ancestors lived through feast and famine, and the shadow of this still influences our thinking. Next time you buy equipment sit around the table and agree the decision criteria together. Then stick to them and repel all attempts at up-selling.

You Are Delegating Too Much ? Delegation is part of company culture, or if you prefer the collective way of doing things. If you delegate something completely it is akin to saying I do not care much about this, make it happen. Energy saving is a financial and moral imperative. The fact the oil price is down does not mean there is no place for sustainability on your desk (and the price is likely to be up again soon).

Governments succeed in saving energy (whereas businesses often do not) because governments have a crowd of stakeholders beating down the door and demanding progress. As business owners we are more likely to do the same when the pressure is upon us, and that pressure surely has to come from us.

Field service and its impact on your bottom line

There are many pointers to successful field service in any business. Generally, labour hours, parts, technician efficiency, performance indicators and other bunch of data are the most important. However, the icing on top is the total revenue. If you are in business, you must be cocksure that it’s making money, and when you don’t rake in enough you need to make some business decisions quick!

For the most part, field service companies will always have a field service management software to handle all the data. But how will this affect your outlook?

Will this cause a direct increase in revenue?

What will still need to be changed so that the ship stays afloat?

Increase your service jobs

As expected, the best field management software will guarantee a positive increase in appointments per week. On average, the field service team should expect at least a 50% increase in work turnover. There is a direct relation between the revenue you should be making and the number of calls in your schedule since the only way of making more cash is to get more work done. It is not recommended to raise costs because it increases the risk of losing customers easy when they can’t meet the extra expense. Field service software will help you bring in more customers and also manage technicians.

If you have much of the hard work done for you then you?d have more time to run the show. This is why premises are trying out software because they answer many problems like:

Automation and improved work order management
Fast dispatch from an array of drag-drop scheduling tools
Easy-to-use field service apps for technicians to receive and submit work orders
Can be integrated into account systems for faster billing time

Manual operations are costly and prone to error, and they don’t come cheap. Do away with them, reduce costs, sit back and watch as new customers steadily stream in. Grow the business by building lasting relations with your workforce and customers.

Increase technician?s abilities with mobile

If you want to get more profit, bank on technicians who complete service calls. Their task is obviously the hardest. They have an unpredictable job; at times they need to come up with quick responses or they may also be required to dig deep as well. The work does not need to be slowed with an endless paper trail while they could be elsewhere giving their all. These technicians require a working mobile field service management app.

As expected, field service leaders who use a mobile field service software report close to 20% increase in service visits per technician. This translates to each technician taking nearly a fifth more calls in a day. And as we had said before, more service calls can double the profits. How can technicians get extra time from a field service mobile app?

No need to drive to work to pick orders
Less time using the phone looking for service or parts information
Reduces the time needed to go through paper-based work
Less time driving to service calls because information is routed to their mobile phones

Increase revenue from technicians

If time is spent seamlessly, dispatchers will find time in a technician?s schedule for an extra service call. With all this being done within normal working hours, the business stands to increase its bottom line. This is what makes the business grow. Not by increasing technicians but by optimum utilisation of the current staff to get maximum profit. The logic is straightforward ? a technician working 8 hours each day taking six calls a day will make more revenue than the one who takes four, because they are paid the same each, but the business benefits from the extra service calls.

The business stands to make more revenue per technician if it uses field service management software. The margins can go as high as 40% because the technician has all tools needed to get the job done faster. You increase revenue from field work too. Let technicians benefit from automated process and have all the tools for work that they need right on their mobile devices.

The target is always your bottom line

When field service leaders inquire about field service software, they need to know how it affect the bottom line: how they will spend less time drafting schedules, how each technician will increase revenue, how the business will grow. Simple as that!
Field service management applications bring a lot to the table.

Don’t waste your time crunching a lot of numbers or sorting out schedules since this is what such an application should do. Automation, optimisation and mobility are all ways of increasing revenue. Let us help you reach your goals using our top shelf field management software. This will not only help your bottom line but will let you have more time to venture into untapped potentials.