How to Double Your Energy Intensity Improvements [Roundup]

AspenTech Acquires BLOWDOWN Depressurization Modeling Software

Some news in the manufacturing software space this week as AspenTech acquired BLOWDOWN, a software technology developed by Professor Stephen Richardson of Imperial College London, and Dr. Graham Saville, formerly of Imperial College. BLOWDOWN uses depressurization modeling to improve safety and monitor critical activity in oil & gas processing plants.

BLOWDOWN identifies locations in an oil & gas processing facility where temperatures can dramatically decline during depressurization. These low temperatures can lead to a drop in the temperature of the walls and process vesls below the transition temperature of steel, from which the line or vessel is constructed. 

The move provides AspenTech with additional process plant modeling capabilities in its aspenONE Engineering suite, and according to Antonio Pietri, President & CEO of AspenTech, Combining the strenghts of BLOWDOWN with aspenONE's capabilities to design and analyze overpressure protection systems makes it possibe to generate inherently safer and more efficient designs." Full Press Release...

Operational Excellence and EQMS Selection: Two Upcoming LNS Events for Accelerating Success in Both

Next week, we'll be having two data-packed and informative events for our Global Executive Council in our Quality and Manufacturing tracks:

• Tuesday, March 24, 1:00 pm EDT: EQMS Selection and Implementation with Kimberly-Clark Corporation
  • Ben Bollenbacher, Director - Quality, EHS & Continuous Improvement Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, will join us to discuss his experience and learnings in integrating disparate quality systems and data sources and rolling out a successful EQMS solution globally.
• Thursday, March 26, 2:00 pm EDT: Accelerating Operational Excellence at Tyco International
  • Marc Turco, Director of Global Manufacturing at Tyco International, will share insights from Tyco's 12-year continuous improvement journey to help executives avoid pitfalls and optimize their strategies.

As always, LNS analysts will add insight from our most recent data in Quality and Manufacturing. For more information on how you can become a council member, click here.

Do You Have a "Social Listening" Mindset?

We're all aware of social media and its uses in both personal and professional arenas, but most people tend to focus on the side of what to say, rather than what's being said. As we've discussed in the past, sentiment analysis is becoming an important tool for companies to monitor and proactively manage both quality and, subsequently, their brand reputations.

At the Pilgrim Quality Solutions blog, Marketing Manager Roxane Napoli discusses how "social listening," or active Internet monitoring can help companies gain better insight into how the public perceives your company's brand, quality, and relation to competitors. This information can potentially be used toward continuous improvement initiatives, because even though a customer may not perceive an event as adverse in his or her social comment, the feedback may spark ideas for tweaking a process or action, particularly when viewed in the aggregate. Full Post...

In Some Industries, Energy Intensity Can Account for More Than 50% of Production Costs: Why IEM Is Key

According to the Global Industrial Energy Efficiency Benchmarking Report, published by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, in several large industries, such as chemicals, oil & gas, and mining, energy intensity--defined as the energy cost as a percentage of total product cost--can be up to as high as 80%. The report also implies that there's plenty of room for improvement as well, and in this blog post, LNS Research President Matthew Littlefield demonstrates the substantial reduction in energy reduction that can be achieved when organizations begin to view energy as an enterprise-wide initiative with executive buy-in. Tying to EHS, sustainability, and APM strategies, an enterprise approach to energy management, data shows some companies with an enterprise-wide energy management program are achieving up double the improvements in energy intensity as those companies that lack such a plan.

Matthew will be going into much more detail about strategies and key metrics for improving energy intensity in the upcoming free webinar: Enabling Operational Excellence with Energy Intelligence, on Tuesday, March 24 at 1:00 pm EDT.