Shoestring held its first Sustainability Requirements workshop this month to find out how the Shoestring approach could best help companies improve their sustainability performance.
The 24 participants, coming from 12 companies, who attended the workshop at the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, explored the Shoestring digital solutions catalogue for sustainability improvement ideas. The interactive format of the workshop enabled them to think through the areas that would best help their sustainability performance.
Most of the sentiments were centred around process control and energy monitoring as the main solution requirements. This was in response to the ongoing energy crisis and large gains that can be achieved from process control optimisation, reducing both material and energy use.
The top digital solution area for this group was process monitoring, with Energy usage monitoring coming second and Job tracking third (see the chart below).
The individual company responses from the workshop revealed a good level of engagement and some interesting solution ideas which included:
- Monitor and display gas and energy usage for the manufacturing plant
- Measure quantity of defects and record the causes
- Higher scrap transparency and quicker feedback
- Energy usage, and power monitoring
Following on from the workshop further analysis and in-company specification workshops will be conducted, as well as a few industrial sustainability pilots. These will start in the East of England, over the next couple of months, where a power monitoring starter solution will be deployed in three companies – CamdenBoss, PIL Membranes and Warren Services. This activity will help demonstrate how the low-cost solutions can help companies improve their sustainability performance. We will also use the findings from all this activity to help prepare for future sustainability workshops.
Interested in learning more about how Shoestring can improve your company’s sustainability performance?
Send us an email at contact@digitalshoestring.net.