Sme Fertility

Is there a way to simultaneously reduce costs, increase efficiency and minimize environmental impact?

The old adage of one man trash is another man's treasure should never leave the mind of a Creative Manager - at one point, he became more effective for some chicken producers to export of chicken feet and wing tips to China than to simply discard.

There is a market for almost anything. Somewhere.

All wastes have costs associated with the form of:

• Disposal costs;
• Storage costs;
• Environmental costs;
• Cost of inefficient use (discarded equipment), and
• The opportunity cost (sale or redeployment of latent value).

An externality is a cost or benefit to an entity not directly involved in the transaction. For the internalization of positive externalities - bi-products that provide benefits to third parties - for sale, re-use the same production system or introducing another system, the waste can be reduced, increased productivity and reduced cost.

Disposal. Remove the cost.

So how can you reduce your waste?

If you can establish a secondary market for waste from your production system like chicken feet for example, you can achieve both environmental and economic benefits of waste reduction and efficiency optimization. Take the example of composite fiberglass, where the scrap and wastes can be shredded to become building materials, or nitrogen
content of waste milk can be used as fertilizer, or wood substitutes that can be manufactured from recycled plastics.

While carbon emissions are used to stimulate growth of algae to be consumed in the production of bio-fuels. Where there is no market for your waste management techniques developed to increase throughput and reduce the cost can be adapted to any process, whatever the size of your organization.

Lean manufacturing is a production practice that considers the distribution of resources - time, labor and capital - to a job other than adding value to the end customer to be unnecessary. Basically, anything that does not add any value to the final product is removed from the process.

One way to remove any allocation of resources is the 5S method, which can be used by any small business tomedium to increase throughput. By increasing the flow, you can increase capacity without capital expenditures or major process redesign. For example, designing a cart to a certain height, workers do not have to bend repeatedly
access or distribute material. Not only does this save time in each activity, but it will also have obvious health and safety benefits.

5S for SMEs

Sort: If you do not use it, remove from the process or the physical region. If used occasionally, store it. You'll be surprised at the space that is freed by this simple task, and the increase in flow which allows such a simple task.

Trimming: Organize the tools you use frequently in a logical order. Organize your cell production sites in a logical sequence to develop a directional silhouettes flow.Draw behind the tools to let you know when one is absent and where everyone goes. Keep your tools close to their location of use to eliminate the time forward and backward.

Add 1-10 of the sequence and ask someone in their circle of one to ten in order. Repeat the process, but this time write 1-10 in the sequence. Note the difference in time to go around in good condition. It's a simple exercise to illustrate the rapid improvements that you can do when you "put in order".

Sweep: systematic or regular cleaning of the working space will provide a workspace free. In a clean environment, any faults can be detected more easily and improve safety will be a byproduct. Scan shoule.