Author Archives: AccountMate

Sustainability and the Sports Arena

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MAY 28, 2014
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Now The Wall Street Journal (May 19, 2014) reports that NFL teams are starting to see “green” as well.  The San Francisco 49er’s new $1.2 billion stadium will be the first in the league to feature a “living roof,” a canopy of green and flowering plants nestled across the top of an 8-story tower of luxury suites; this will reduce the building’s energy use and offer other environmental benefits by providing natural insulation. NFL clubs are also developing green programs to reduce energy emissions. They are using solar panels, wind turbines, electric charging stations and other low-carbon alternatives. The NFL is part of a general effort among U.S. sports leagues to embrace cleaner energy, led by a group launched in 2011 calling itself the Green Sports Alliance.

Alliance officials say sports teams that go green help boost public awareness of environmental goals while also benefiting their operations by lowering their energy costs. The $1.2 billion Atlanta Falcons Stadium, set to open in 2017, will include a rainwater-collection system to use for irrigation and cooling. The Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field has installed features including energy-saving timers and sensors for lighting and cooling equipment. These and other energy-saving features have cut the team’s power consumption by half. The Houston Texans have created an interactive media guide, saving 2.6 million pages used in printing; the Redskins have installed solar panels at FedEx Field; the Rams have printed game tickets on recycled paper; the Vikings have put in reduced-flow plumbing at the players’ clubhouse and training areas; and the 49er’s stadium is net energy neutral, which means it is expected to generate all the energy it needs for the team’s 10 home games.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Offshoring and Reshoring Reach a Balance for U.S.

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MAY 15, 2014

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In 2001, Generac Power Systems joined the wave of American companies shifting production to China. The move wiped out 400 jobs in Wisconsin, but few could argue with management’s logic: Chinese companies were offering to make a key component for $100 per unit less than the cost of producing it in the U.S. Now, however, Generac has brought manufacturing of that component back to its Whitewater plant. The move is part of a sea change in American manufacturing, reports the Los Angeles Times (May 13,2014): After three decades of an exodus of production to China and other low-wage countries, companies have sharply curtailed moves abroad. Some, like Generac, have begun to return manufacturing to U.S. shores. The tipping point came when Generac had enough sales to justify investing millions of dollars in new equipment for the Whitewater plant. The company can now produce an alternator with 1 worker in the time it took 4 workers in China.

Harry Moser, of Chicago’s Reshoring Institute, tracks the inflow of jobs and estimates that last year marked the first time since the offshoring trend began that factory jobs returning to the U.S. matched the number lost, at about 40,000 each. “Offshoring and ‘re-shoring’ were roughly in balance — I call that victory,” said Moser.

Several factors lie behind the change:  (1) Over the last decade, Chinese labor and transportation costs have jumped while U.S. wages have stagnated; (2) Manufacturing also has become more automated, further reducing labor’s weight in the cost equation; (3) The boom in natural gas production in the U.S., largely driven by fracking, has led to a 25% decrease in gas prices in the U.S., contrasted with a 138% increase in China; and (4) the rise of online commerce has made local control of supply chains more important, especially because many U.S. manufacturers report growing problems with quality control of goods made in China.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

3-D Printing–or Additive Manufacturing?

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MAY 13, 2014

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A new way to turbocharge turbine-making

Engineering companies now prefer to talk about “additive manufacturing” rather than “3D printing,” writes The Economist (May 3, 2014). One reason is that printing is not quite the right word for some of the technologies given this label. Whereas hobbyist-scale 3D printers typically build a product by squirting out drops of plastic, a newer manufacturing technique called selective laser melting zaps successive layers of powder with a laser or ion beam, hardening only certain bits. Larger firms want to stress the “manufacturing” aspect: that technology has moved beyond the development labs and is now being used on the factory floor to make complex metal parts. In Siemen’s gas turbines, for example, elaborately shaped blade components are hard to design and costly to make. But Siemens is using additive manufacturing machines to cut the cost and the time needed to replace the blades on customers’ turbines when they break– eventually from 44 weeks down to 4.

For simpler mechanical parts, the approach allows designers to imagine shapes that would be impossible to create through older techniques, besides greatly speeding up prototyping—for turbine blades and similar parts, from 16-20 weeks to just 48 hours, Siemens says. Additive manufacturing cuts the cost of tooling and materials: a piece can have all of its holes incorporated into it, with great precision, as it is built up from powder, instead of needing to have them expensively drilled afterwards. Siemens hopes to cut the cost of some parts by perhaps 30%.  As it gets easier to make low-volume, specialized parts in-house, Siemens gains bargaining-power when it comes to outsourcing such parts to other firms.

Aircraft engines, subject to even higher standards of reliability than turbines, are another area in which the engineering giants have implemented additive manufacturing. GE is using it to make fuel nozzles for its next-generation Leap engines. GE says the nozzles will be 25% lighter and five times more durable than their predecessors—and since there are 20 or so in each engine, the weight savings are significant.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.