Sustainability continuous improvement

To achieve the sustainable continuous improvements of truly lean operations, companies need to execute holistic programs. They have to give their organizations clear visions for operational excellence and the ability to identify and execute on situation-specific targets, but also individual approaches to address the soft side of change - capability building and changes in mindsets and behaviors. The journey is difficult, but the rewards are still fast and very considerable. 

Perfect Process Safety How to Ensure Sustainable Continuous Improvement to an audience of chemical and refinery process safety people at McNeese State University (Lake Charles, LA) in the Fall of 2012. One of his many concepts to improve process safety was remember your vulnerability. This message was for all employees in chemical manufacturing and petroleum facilities [4]. 

Arendt JS. In search of perfect process safely how to ensure sustainable continuous improvement presented at McNeese State University (Lake Charles, LA), Nov 14, 2012. This covers part of a broader presentation given in Rrmcon, UK. Available from http // WWW. slideshare.net/NSAPI/steve-arendt-mncom-uk-presentation-8-2112-final [accessed 26.01.14]. 

Arendt S. ABS consulting, in search of perfect process safety. How to ensure sustainable continuous improvement, LAI/MEP OSHA. Lake Charles, LA Process Safety Studies 2012. 

One key requirement here is reinforcement feedback, reassessment, mid-course corrections, and on-going training are vital to sustaining continuous improvement [7]. 

On the one hand, the current petrochemical route would continue to provide the world with the chemicals consumers require. To satisfy the need for a more sustainable development, the petrochemical industry would continue its drive toward a continuous improvement in energy efficiency (see Figure 10.3). This drive will primarily include the continuous improvement of the current crude-oil-based processes while stranded methane or CO2 would be utilized as complementary feedstock. 

Hypothesis (14) Comprehensive sustainability innovations can be missed by continuous improvement in too small stages, e.g. the substantial reduction of both resource consumption and also toxic risks. 

Biodiesel can be produced by a sustainable continuous process based on catalytic reactive distillation. The integrated design ensures the removal of water byproduct that shifts the chemical equilibrium to completion and preserves the catalyst activity. The novel alternative proposed here replaces the liquid catalysts with solid acids, thus dramatically improving the economics of current biodiesel synthesis and reducing the number of downstream steps. The key benefits of this approach are ... 

Sustainable material management has to pursue both economic and ecological objectives in order to succeed in global competition. Material flows have to be optimised in quantitative and qualitative terms so that the services in question can be rendered with maximum efficiency and minimal emissions. Moreover, business companies are generally aware of the fact that only those companies will survive that continuously improve their performance while enhancing customer orientation and, above all, avoiding excessive resource consumption. 

Given the data challenges discussed previously and the increasing use of streamlined methods, it is necessary to continuously improve the consistency and transparency of the information and the assumptions used in such tools to ensure the quality and the validity of the decisions made with the aid of LGA metrics. The inclusion of quality indicators (such as sensitivity and uncertainty analysis) will continue to be an important step to estimate the uncertainties involved in the inventory and impact models. Finally, there is a need to continuously perform peer review assessments by LGA experts, as the current LGA expertise in pharmaceuticals is very limited. When these requirements are fulfilled, LGA metrics are powerful tools to aid the decision making leading to more sustainable pharmaceutical processes. For further examples of FLASG scores and other LGA analyzes being applied, see Section 10.4.1. 

It all boils down to one point - it is a huge challenge for executives to reach the whole production organization in order not only to achieve sustainable impact fast, but also to really initiate continuous improvements. It is becoming more and more crucial to avoid tradeoffs between speed and sustainability and to achieve both in parallel. The benefits to the successful organizations that figure out how to execute such programs are still very substantial. 

An SCM improvement program should create momentum, break down the scope into manageable pieces, and explicitly manage the cultural and skill change necessary to ensure sustainability and continuous improvement. In addition, top management conviction and support are unshirkable prerequisites for success. 

Strong Basis for Long-term Sustainability and Continuous Improvement... 

In addition, the necessary understanding, motivation, and capabilities have to be created to ensure sustainability and continuous improvement by means of formal training as well as personnel development planning supported by regular coaching and feedback sessions. 

The use of sunflower meal is often limited by its availability. Adequate volumes, available on a sustained and consistent basis, would ensure a high utilization of sunflower meal in animal nutrition. Despite its dark appearance, lower energy, and higher fiber content, as compared to soybean meal, sunflower meal is a competitive product with potential for continued improvement through the use of tail-end screening to further reduce its fiber content (40). 

Visibly supporting a continuous improvement culture that benefits everyone is an effective strategy to sustain process safety performance. Improvement efforts are often cast as a program with a definite beginning and presumptive end point. Driving to zero process safety incidents will require a sustained effort with evolving focus over the life of the process operations. 

The reporting process also enabled us to take inventory of our performance measures, our current sustainability initiatives, and our strategic framework for continuous improvement in corporate transparency. 

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