Step 3 - Identification of options

Task 3a: Determine causes of losses

TK Chemical Complex Ltd (Chemicals, Bangladesh)

• An external trainer facilitated a brainstorm session that was used to determine possible causes of the excess use of fuel oil. Because management and many production staff were involved in this session many possible causes were found:

  • Surface sizing of major products, including writing and printing paper, requires additional drying after sizing
  • More paper break due to size press
  • Percentage of fiber furnace
  • Possibility of slimes escaping from cleaning system causing excess paper break
  • Possibility of non-uniform mechanical dewatering
  • Additional steam demand for starch cooking
  • Non-uniform drying at the dry end of machine
  • Poor boiler efficiency (average 10.5 ton of steam per ton of fuel oil compared to 14 ton of steam per ton of fuel oil).
  • Excess machine breakage and percentage breakage in the converting section.

  Lesson learnt: A brainstorm session with as many staff as possible will result in the identification of more causes of observed energy losses.

Yuanping Municipal Chemical Industrial Co. Ltd (Chemicals, China)

• This plant was visited by an energy expert and a Cleaner Production expert from the GERIAP project to train the plant’s Team and the Chinese external facilitators on carrying out an energy assessment. The different perspectives from the two areas of expertise came to light when it was observed that a lot of heat was lost through the exit gas of the synthesis furnace. The energy expert suggested that the waste heat in the exit gas could be reused to preheat the inlet air (combustion air) of the synthesis furnace. The Cleaner Production expert looked at this from a different angle and found out that the coal used for the furnace was of poor quality and that coal was fed into the furnace in sizes ranging from 80 – 200 mm. He suggested implementing strict quality control measures to regulate coke sizes to a maximum of 40 – 50mm, which would ensure more efficient and completing combustion and reduce the amount of waste heat in exit gas.
  Lesson learnt: Cleaner Production and energy experts often can provide useful input from different perspectives. It is therefore recommended to include people in the Team from both backgrounds to maximize the output of the assessment.

External facilitators

• The external facilitating organization in the Philippines, ITDI, held an internal training session for its staff to teach them about the importance of determining the causes of losses and how to do this using the Fish Bone Diagram. This greatly improved their ability to work with companies to identify losses and after that generate options to reduce these losses and improve energy efficiency at the plants they work with.
  Lesson learnt: It is useful for external facilitators to build their in-house capacity to effectively facilitate a case analysis.

Other lessons learnt:

• The benefits of a cause analysis are often not understood and therefore the Team is likely to skip this task. An experiences (external) facilitator can be useful to facilitate the cause analysis, which will contribute tremendously to the identification of good options as part of task 3b
• To make most efficient use of the Team’s time the cause analysis should focus first on the biggest losses identified as part of task 2e
• All identified causes should be recorded because it may only be possible to address a small number of causes in the short term and the “root cause” in the medium/long term
• A brainstorm session is useful, where participants keep asking why, why, why, until they have identified the root cause of energy and material losses
• Many company staff are certain that there is no scope for improvement in the production processes and equipments and are therefore less open to discuss inefficiencies
• Active involvement of Team members and other staff from the focus areas is important to identify the real cause of losses
• The external facilitators of the GERIAP project found the fishbone diagram very useful to find the root causes of material and energy losses