Category Archives: Domestic Business

Barbies, Auto Parts Hot Off the 3-D Press

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June 11,2013

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Ford forges ahead with 3-D printing of this engine cover

Ford forges ahead with 3-D printing of this engine cover

Companies such as GE, Ford and Mattel are pushing 3-D printing further into the mainstream than most people realize, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 6, 2013). Unlike traditional techniques, where objects are cut or drilled from molds, resulting in some wasted materials, 3-D printing lets workers model an object on a computer and print it out with plastic, metal or composite materials.

Ford Motor The auto maker sees a future where customers will be able to print their own replacement parts. A customer could log onto the Web, scan a bar code or print up an order, take it to a local 3-D printer, and have the part in hours or minutes. Ford is currently using 3-D printing to prototype automobile parts for test vehicles. Ford engineers use industrial-grade machines that cost as much as $1 million to produce prototypes of cylinder heads, brake rotors, and rear axles in less time than traditional manufacturing methods. Using 3-D printing, Ford saves an average of one month of production time to create a casting for a prototype cylinder head for its EcoBoost engines. The traditional casting method, which requires designing both a sand mold as well as the tool to cut the mold, can take 5 months.

General Electric GE’s Aviation unit prints fuel injectors and other components within the combustion system of jet engines. Building engine airflow castings by melting metal powders layer by layer is more precise than making and cutting the parts from a ceramic mold.

Mattel The toy maker used to sculpt prototypes of toys from wax and clay before building the production models out of plastic. Today, Mattel engineers use any of 30 3-D printers to create parts of virtually every type of toy that it manufactures, including popular brands such as Barbie, Max Steel, Hot Wheels cars and Monster High dolls.

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.

Walgreen’s “Net Zero Energy” Stores

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June 6, 2013

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Roof of new Walgreen store in Evanston, IL contains 800 solar panels

Roof of new Walgreen store in Evanston, IL contains 800 solar panels

As the Walgreen Company expands its sales items to fresh salads, Redbox DVD rentals and digital photo scanners, among other products, its consumption of power keeps inching up. While the drugstore chain cannot significantly reduce its electricity use in all stores immediately, it is building its first “net zero energy” store in Evanston, IL, that it hopes will produce more energy than it consumes. Alternative energy equipment at the store includes more than 800 solar panels on the roof, two 35-foot wind turbines and a geothermal energy system dug hundreds of feet beneath the store’s foundation.

The net zero concept is part of the retail giant’s overall sustainability plan to reduce energy use by 20% by 2020 across all of its more than 8,000 stores, reports The New York Times (June 5, 2013). The cost of building the new store will be about twice that of a typical new store. Over time, however, executives expect to recoup the extra costs from reductions in the store’s energy use, tax credits and rebates from utility companies.

Walgreen is also incorporating several conservation and energy producing strategies in existing stores, including LED lighting, energy-efficient building materials and carbon dioxide refrigerant for heating, cooling and refrigeration.

The new store, on the site of an old store that had been razed, is being built by recycling more than 85% of the demolished store’s material like bricks, concrete and metal. In addition, Walgreen has drilled eight 550-foot holes for pipes — about as deep as the landmark Chicago Board of Trade building is tall — to create a geothermal energy system that will use the constant temperature of earth to heat and cool the building.

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.

Unilever’s Green Thumb

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June 5, 2013

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Unilever CEO Polman and his products

Unilever CEO Polman and his products

“Our purpose is to have a sustainable business model that is put at the service of the greater good,” says the CEO of consumer products giant Unilever in Fortune (June 10, 2013).This sounds like the boilerplate that fills corporate-responsibility reports, but Unilever has gone beyond companies like GE, IBM, and Wal-Mart by putting sustainability at the core of its business. In a 2010 manifesto, Unilever promised to double its sales even as it cuts its environmental footprint in half and sources all its agricultural products in ways that don’t degrade the earth. The company also promised to improve the well-being of 1 billion people by, for example, persuading them to wash their hands or brush their teeth, or by selling them foods with less salt or fat.

Whether Unilever’s do-good agenda has driven its financial success is hard to know.  The firm’s global hand-washing campaign, for instance, lifts sales of Lifebuoy soap, while a “brush day and night” campaign helps Pepsodent. Socially responsible marketing around self-esteem for women helped Dove become Unilever’s bestselling brand in the U.S.

The model drives innovation too. Unilever researchers are working to develop a laundry detergent that can clean clothes in a few minutes at any water temperature. The company wants to reduce the sugar in its ready-to-drink teas and remove calories from ice cream. It’s telling the farmers who supply it with palm oil, soybeans, tea, cocoa, and tomatoes to get their crops certified as sustainable. The chickens that lay the eggs that go into Hellmann’s mayonnaise or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream must be cage free. No other company has a sustainability program as wide and deep. Unilever’s plan includes 60 targets, with timetables, such as sourcing “75% of the paper and board for our packaging from certified sustainably managed forests or recycled material.”

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.