SWEP sustainability report 2019

Scrap success stories Scrap reduction

Reducing scrap can be an important way to address our environmental impact, by decreasing our energy and material use. Two SWEP sites have performed excellently this year, and have set an example for the rest of the industry to follow.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Our Malaysian plant set themselves an ambitious target of reducing scrap on the production of XL units by 50%. They used the 4M approach (Man, Machine, Method, Maintenance) to make sure that every aspect of their production process was carefully investigated. The project succeeded through a combination of increased staff awareness, improved fitting, and changes to maintenance procedures. This resulted in a reduction in scrap costs of 60.9%. Material scrap is also sold to recycling companies, separated when possible to yield the highest return and optimal reuse.

By decreasing the amount of scrap created, a site can reduce the amount of energy and material they need to produce every heat exchanger. This can cut transportation demands too, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the value chain. The scrap reduction projects in our sites in Slovakia and Malaysia succeeded through careful planning, thorough investigation and decisive action. Kosice, Slovakia Our Kosice plant set themselves a tough target of reducing their scrap by 24%. The site managers did a series of Pareto analyzes for all of the production teams, and identified the location and root causes of scrap. A number of possible causes of scrap were identified, including two that are related to brazing processes. One of the key discoveries from the Pareto analyzes was that these processes were inter-related: measures taken to reduce scrap in one process could have caused more scrap to be created in the other process. Therefore the project team had to address both processes simultaneously, making slight changes to both product design and assembly. The changes proved to be a great success, and the Kosice plant comfortably met their challenging target for 2019.

SWEP SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

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