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Environmental Stewardship Goes Beyond Compliance

Situation

As a supplier to General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler, Carlisle Engineered Products knew that ISO 14001 standard compliance was inevitable. So, company management came to EISC for assistance.

"We went into this at first because it was mandated by our automotive customers" said Bill Cooley, material development manager at Carlisle. "We had general ideas about what we wanted to do, but we needed a level of experience and benchmarking that we didn't have at the outset."

Solution

Carlisle's staff, with help from EISC’s environmental management team, accomplished much in just one year. High on Carlisle's priority list was a comprehensive and cost-effective storm water pollution prevention system, which improved the quality of effluent from the company’s oil/water separator and ensured compliance with federal permits.

Carlisle also is striving to reduce electrical usage by 10% over the next two years by installing controls that keep injection-molding machines running at top efficiency. And insulating blankets have been installed on molding machines to conserve heat.

The environmental management system (EMS) takes aim at the company’s nonhazardous scrap production on a particular product line. To decrease the line’s scrap by 50 percent, packaging and handling procedures were studied and process controls were implemented.

Carlisle's cooling tower system was targeted, with chemicals adjusted and more environmentally friendly ones added. The resulting process is less costly, and there is one less report to do.

Paperless record keeping was another goal. EISC helped to integrate QS-9000 and ISO 14001 documents, with everything stored electronically and accessible to everyone in the company. Only one hard copy will be kept as a backup.

Rick Mazur, EISC product manager-environmental, said Carlisle already had a good start. "They had an environmental management program in place, but ISO 14001 registration brought it into a standard format. We helped them put it in a format that the entire staff could understand."

Results

Carlisle Engineered Products now produces 50 percent less scrap on a key product line and uses less electricity. The company’s effluent is cleaner, and its chiller system uses environmentally friendly chemicals. Light bulbs containing mercury are even recycled.

"We had always done a good job complying with environmental regulations, but the EMS we developed with EISC goes well beyond that," said Dr. Ed Crowe, Technical Director at Carlisle. “It makes us a better corporate citizen and saves us money. It’s a proactive system."

Carlisle also has a framework for future improvements. "We've identified another several dozen opportunities for Carlisle to pursue in the years to come," Mazur said.

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