How Aerospace Manufacturer Makes Sustainability Fly Cross-company

By Kate Bachman | September 13, 2016

Category:
Avionics pilot controls

Avionics and information technology systems company Rockwell Collins sought a flight path to implement sustainability initiatives across multiple sites.

Rockwell Collins Inc. is a $5.24 billion American multinational aerospace manufacturer providing avionics and information technology systems and services to governmental agencies and aircraft manufacturers. Company leaders wanted to formalize their sustainability initiatives and implement them companywide across multiple sites.

“In 2009 there was an effort to get a cohesive approach to our sustainability program,” said Rockwell Collins Principal Lean Consultant Brion Hurley. The aerospace manufacturer was getting requests from customers, through the Carbon Disclosure Project, to report its carbon emissions, he relayed.

“We compose a corporate sustainability report each year, but it seemed that a lot of effort was required to pull that carbon emissions data together,” Hurley said. “There was an initiative to get the different facilities to compile not just what we did each year but to have some ongoing efforts to improve them—and to share that information with other locations.” A team was assembled to build some infrastructure into getting the utility data compiled into one place so it could generate reports instead of compiling them manually, he said.

The company has had a lean program in place since 1998; however, the high-complexity, low-volume nature of its product mix presented a few challenges from a traditional lean approach. “We have a high mix of products, and each one takes hours to assemble and test. Some actions are done repetitively but on different product lines throughout the day, so it’s difficult to measure and evaluate a truly repeatable process,” Hurley said.

Six Sigma/Lean Combination Framework Develops

In conjunction with its lean system, the company leveraged Six Sigma, defined as a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating process defects to help build a framework for implementing sustainability corporatewide.

“A lean approach gets people involved at the lowest levels and engages them to identify the energy, water, or material waste that’s going on in their area,” Hurley commented.

“Six Sigma, on the other hand, is very structured as to how things are done,” he continued. “There is more prioritization and organization around the improvements and a lot more emphasis on the data analysis piece—getting the right data up front … making sure you have good measurements … coming to a statistically based decision.”

A substantial amount of data is generated from each product built and tested, Hurley stated. “Six Sigma has helped us address complex quality issues, and provided a different set of tools to our engineers and support teams.”

What had not existed before was a methodical structure to get difficult data, Hurley added. “That was the case with the electricity use reduction effort. No data existed about how much electricity was being used across all our buildings, and especially within each building. The effort to automate utility data collection was very useful for our Six Sigma efforts, because it helped us identify which buildings had the most opportunity. We could then apply the structured methodology of Six Sigma to gather the detailed data we needed,” Hurley said.

The Six Sigma approach entails a smaller group of people doing data collection and number crunching, Hurley commented. “It’s not as inclusive as lean. So we combined both approaches—top down with Six Sigma and bottoms up with lean.”

First Project at Beta Site Nets 600 Percent ROI

Rockwell Collin Headquarters

Figure 1: Aerospace manufacturer Rockwell Collins’ Cedar Rapids headquarters served as the beta site for a two-pronged approach to sustainability implementation focusing on cutting its high energy use.

The manufacturer’s Cedar Rapids headquarters served as the beta site for the two-pronged approach to sustainability implementation—Six Sigma’s data gathering and analysis and lean’s gemba walk, or go-and-see approach (see Figure 1). “It’s the biggest facility and by far our biggest energy consumer, so it made sense to start there.” The first project was done specifically to address the large electricity spend there, Hurley said, and netted a 600 percent return on investment.

Go-and-see. The team used its existing lean initiative as the primary framework for the bottoms-up approach, and then adopted its existing templates and tools to focus on energy reduction. “The gemba walk concept was already getting a lot of momentum in our company (see Figure 2). We saw that a lot of other companies were also doing something similar (GE’s Energy Treasure Hunts), so it made sense to use that format to find energy opportunities at the individual process level.”

Figure 2: A gemba walk, or go-and-see exercise in which an inclusive group walks to each area of use to witness waste firsthand and up close.

Figure 2:  Rockwell Collins employed a gemba walk, or go-and-see exercise, in which an inclusive group walked to each area of use to witness waste firsthand and up close.

The project began with getting measurements that indicated areas to focus on. “We went down the path of gathering data and breaking down the utility bill, trying to find opportunities and determine where the biggest user and driver was, and then working with the local team to make observations and come up with solutions.”

Six energy go-and-see events were conducted over a two-year period in three facilities in Cedar Rapids, as well as one Rockwell Collins plant near Dallas. Product flow throughout the manufacturing process was examined, as well as the interior and exterior infrastructure (flow of heated and cooled air, water, and energy) of the building, Hurley relayed.

Prior to each gemba walk, the facilitator generated a project charter that requires signoff from management to make sure they were not just giving lip service to energy reduction activity. “The document answers questions like, ‘Why are we doing it? Who should be involved? What’s the outcome we’re going to get? What problem does this solve? What’s the timeframe? Who’s the owner or the champion?’” Hurley said.

More than 50 employees were trained to look for energy waste, and the events identified more than $200,000 in opportunities. Three areas were red-flagged right away: Compressed air leaks; heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC); and lights in use while no one occupied the building.

“Basically that infrastructure helped identify some of our highest carbon emissions areas,” Hurley said.

Prioritizing. As a way of ranking the ideas generated during the gemba walks, the team created an “impact ease matrix” that rated not only how effective a change would be but also how easy it would be to implement (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: An impact ease matrix helped the team prioritize optimal projects.

Figure 3: An impact ease matrix helped the team prioritize optimal projects.

“We use an affinity diagram first. It’s a way of organizing the brainstorming activity. We’ll do the Post-it note exercise. People post a lot of the ideas they generated from the gemba walk, and then we’ll look for duplication or ways to group them under a theme, like ‘heating and cooling,'” Hurley said. Next, the team uses the impact ease matrix to understand which ideas have the biggest impact for the least amount of effort or cost. Then the group votes and rates the project ideas.

“Without some prioritization, 100 ideas can be identified, but trying to implement all of them ends up being unsuccessful. It’s overwhelming to the leadership and the team members. So I restrict the number we actually commit to, but then I make sure those actually get done so it’s not a wasted effort. We can always add more improvement ideas once we get the initial ones completed,” Hurley said.

Six Sigma Project. The first formal Six Sigma project related to reducing electricity took place at the same time as the go-and-see events. Based on data collected from all the substations in the building, a pie chart showing where the energy was being used, which matched some statistical analysis of the utility bill.

That directed attention to the cooling system. The team identified energy-saving opportunities in how the air handlers were being used. Hurley and the team piloted putting in some setback times and temperatures on the air handlers, based on employee surveys and observations of employee work hours. “We tested that out in a pilot area of the building, got positive results, and extrapolated the savings out to the rest of the building.” That gave company management a good estimate of the potential savings of replicating the project throughout, which simplified the decision to proceed with installing a setback system for the air conditioning system’s air handling units.

The company also installed air handler override buttons in each area to alleviate concerns employees had about working on weekends in an uncomfortable-temperature environment. The system allow them to adjust the temperature when needed. That made the air handler setback program more acceptable to employees, which eased its adoption.

“As a result of that project, for a $50,000 investment in materials and labor, we were able to save $300,000 in electricity costs per year—a two-month payback,” Hurley reported.

Expanding Sustainability Companywide

Once the lean/Six Sigma framework was well-established, the manufacturer’s next move was to try to repeat its Cedar Rapids headquarters success at its network of global operations and 20,000 employees.

Hurley brought the two-pronged strategy to Rockwell Collins’ Wilsonville (Portland), Ore., plant next.

There, he encountered one of the most common challenges facing multisite implementation: How to modify the approach for other sites. What works at one site may not work at another.

Hurley said that both lean and Six Sigma can be used to uncover waste in energy, water, air, and materials, depending on what the main concerns and biggest cost drivers are at each facility.

“You use a similar framework at each facility, but details vary from facility to facility. You have to get scope around what you’re doing, plan it out ahead of time, and get all the right people together.” The team identified occupancy sensors that were not working, personal refrigerators and heaters in office spaces, and more light fixtures than needed.

Hurley had planned to roll out multiple go-and-see events first, then Six Sigma projects, but had a little trouble getting traction initially. “A lot of work had been done already to make the building energy efficient, so instead, I spent time learning about the past activities and efficiencies that were designed into the building already. We started using the lean and Six Sigma approaches only after we were able to get some electricity metering in place, which highlighted the opportunities at this site.”

Regional Benchmarking Unearths Gap List. Hurley and the team discovered that Clackamas County, in which Wilsonville is located, had a sustainability certification program. To qualify, entities had to have accomplished at least half of the items on a sustainability checklist.

“So my first step upon arriving at the Wilsonville plant was to set up a green team of people who seemed interested in being involved in this sustainability effort. The county checklist was a great way for us to focus on tangible actions we could take. As we went through that checklist, we found out that, although a lot of good things had been done already, we had some gaps.”

Establishing Problem Statement. Hurley said that the green team needed a way to measure progress of its efforts. Previously it had not had a good way of benchmarking against any kind of criteria. “So from a lean perspective, we want to first define the problem, but we didn’t have a problem statement.”

The gaps in the county checklist became the problem statement. The team spent the next year working through the gaps. A county advisor also worked with the team, even attending green team meetings to answer questions and help.

“Starting out, it was easier to get people rallied around the gap list. They weren’t complex things—just cleaning up things that we had overlooked or not focused, like switching to paper with 30 percent recycled content; labeling the storm drains to remind people that they are not sewers; better labeling on the recycling bins; and getting recycling bins in every room. So we had bits and pieces in place, but we had some gaps as well. Working to get through the checklist allowed us to clean up some of those gaps and make things a little more consistent.”

Surprising Baseload Usage Signals All-clear for Installations

The green team had a unique opportunity to determine the plant’s baseload when it was shut down for a seasonal break. Metering and sub-metering electricity use in 15-minute increments had highlighted that the building had much more baseload usage than expected, Hurley reported. “The facility group was surprised at how much we were using as a baseload on the weekends and at night. So that was what created the problem statement for the Six Sigma project: ‘Why are we using so much baseload energy?’ ‘Where is it coming from?’ ‘Is there an opportunity to cut that usage?’”

Based on the baseload energy data and the county’s sustainability checklist, the team received the all-clear to install occupancy sensors on manufacturing floor lights, and purchase renewable energy credits for 18 percent of its electricity usage. “We lease the building, so it was hard to sell a permanent renewable energy installation like solar. So we signed up for our utility’s clean energy program, which funds future wind energy projects in the region,” Hurley said.

The $7,000 occupancy sensor investment will bring an estimated cost savings of $3,400 per year, so the ROI is projected to be around two years.

In addition, the Rockwell Collins Wilsonville plant was awarded the gold-level Leaders in Sustainability certification from Clackamas County. “I think we are the first manufacturing facility in the county to achieve it, and we are very proud of achieving that recognition,” Hurley said.

Future Projects

Rockwell Collins is projected to grow its manufacturing in the upcoming years. “So our goal is to not increase our electricity consumption even while we increase manufacturing activity and output by reducing our energy usage to offset the increase,” Hurley said.

The team identified a large LED lighting retrofit project with a payback similar to the lighting occupancy sensors—around two years with state and local rebates. “If we can’t get funding for it this year, we’ll still pursue other opportunities to achieve a 5 percent energy reduction goal, such as equipment shutoff,” Hurley said.

Hurley is confident that the goal is achievable now that his team has gotten quantifiable information. The electricity metering at the facility level and portable metering installed on equipment was helpful in piecing together how energy was spent, he relayed. The pattern of energy usage is not what everyone expected.

“Now we have better data that highlights some opportunities for energy cuts that we’ve been missing or weren’t able to quantify in the past. That is what garnered support for this energy reduction project.

“The ability to gather and analyze electricity data has been one the most powerful instruments we’ve had to help move our sustainability program forward.”

Brion Hurley is Principal Lean Consultant, Operations, Wilsonville, for Rockwell Collins, 400 Collins Road N.E., Cedar Rapids, IA 52498brion.hurley@rockwellcollins.com, 321-271-5361.

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