Award for Sustainable Operations or Supply Chain
The Johnson Matthey Award for Sustainable Operations or Supply Chain recognises individuals, teams, sites or businesses that demonstrate excellence in improving the sustainability of their operations or supply chain. This could be through raw materials replacement / reduction, energy improvement, emissions reduction, production step changes, recycling or waste minimisation and includes manufacturing or office based facilities.
The judges were looking for evidence of:
- The contribution the entry makes towards achieving the Sustainability 2017 Vision.
- The social / environmental / ethical / financial impact of the entry.
- Working with others in the supply chain (if appropriate).
- Employee engagement and involvement.
Better Use of Valuable Natural Resources
The Johnson Matthey plant at Devon Park, PA in North America has won the 2008/09 Award for Sustainable Operations or Supply Chain. The plant has devised new ways of reintroducing processed materials back into plant operations to better utilise valuable natural resources and reduce the working capital needed to run the plant. In a single endeavour, good environmental practice has been enhanced and considerable cost savings have been made.
Emission control catalyst manufacturing operations at Devon produce large quantities of processed washcoat (the coating that contains the catalytically active metal species) and rinse water. A cross functional team was set up to develop new reuse methodologies, drawing on the expertise of personnel involved in production application, batching and process engineering. The team observed the Japanese Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement and team members liaised with the catalyst scientists and area personnel to ensure that the new methodologies were technically feasible and could be efficiently implemented.
Substantial technical support and performance testing were required. Handling practices within the batching and online operations were also reviewed, leading to procedural changes, modifications to equipment and extensive operator training. All these activities allowed the plant to maximise the reintroduction of processed material back into the process, while minimising the generation of processed rinse and washcoat material.
Over the last financial year, the team reduced inventory by over 99,000 litres. Around £9.5 million in precious metals have been reused more efficiently through this effort. A further saving of £616,000 was achieved through the reuse of non-platinum group metals and by reducing the amount of waste material. The £10 million plus realised has directly improved organisational cash flow – and a significant amount of precious metal material has been better utilised.
