Novotek Explore – “A Sustainability Strategy your CFO would love”

Our first ‘Novotek Explore’ webinar took place on February 26. Below, you’ll find the recording and the Q&A session from the end of the webinar!

Q: My corporate IT team is spending money on a dedicated ESG/carbon reporting tool. Won’t that cover a lot of these ideas?

Sean’s answer: The systems provided at the enterprise level typically use aggregated utility consumption data to drive carbon conversions (and overall lifecycle accounting) that relate to a firms Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Those systems provide both reference data to support conversions, and generally deliver reporting that easily satisfies the content and format requirements for a range of external-to-the-manufacturer stakeholders. So a lot of really useful things! But they don’t natively collect or store granular data that correlates easily to asset and process data that can help drive understanding of reduction and optimization opportunities. So a good shop floor systems “stack” supplements corporate systems and vice versa – it’s not a one-or-the-other sort of scenario. If all a firm wants to do is “report”, then they can lean more heavily on the enterprise layer. (Scope 3 tracking can force a certain focus on track-and-trace, however!). If a firm wants to actually make the numbers better, then applying the “3 Rs” to plant data is necessary.

Q: Why do this, if I could just deploy renewable energy assets, or CHP systems?

Sean’s answer: The impact from energy asset investment can be big and fast – no question. But resolving underlying optimization opportunities will mean that good assets don’t essentially paper over inefficiencies or losses that are worth chasing in their own regard. It’s worth noting that many of the examples we shared in the webinar were based on investments that are small, and use cases were addressed in weeks, not months. And the initial investments in tools meant that the manufacturer could line up a series of efforts, with relatively low incremental costs. So in terms of “bang for the buck”, it’s hard to beat using data and digital tools.

Q: Where have you seen the most payback? Where to start for the best ROI?

Sean’s answer: If you’re in a super energy or water intensive sector (milling, metal, sugar, mineral processing, etc.), core processes may offer really big gains. We’ve seen one milled product producer reduce their energy use by 20% – in relation to a product line whose cost structure had energy as being over 50% of their COGS! Not every firm deals with that sort of core opportunity. So: two broad statements:

Bonus suggestion – any manufacturer with cleaning processes and any related water treatment considerations will likely find that they can drive improvement around both. CIP is an area where we often see that automation and improved procedural control can yield big results. And water treatment is another are where we see 10%-12% savings in energy and chemical costs being achieved regularly.