Plastic Supplies Dudley Ltd is committed to delivering high-quality moulding services to various industries and supplying the best automotive refinishing products, which sets us apart. Since Plastic Supplies Dudley has become ISO 14001 accredited for Environmental Management, we have been looking at many ways in which our injection moulding company could develop into a greener and more efficient as a business.
Energy bills are constantly increasing at the minute and have very little chance of coming back down any time soon. Therefore, we decided to invest in energy sensors for all of our machines from Sensorfact.
What do energy sensors do?
These will take a reading every 30 seconds so we can see exactly where we are wasting energy. As a result, this enables us to see if there is anything we can do to help reduce the waste. Within the first weekend of running the sensors, we came across a number of areas where we could investigate.
Our Findings
To keep our product prices as low as possible, we try to run as many of our machines for as long as possible while unmanned overnight. As there is no one to check if the machines are still running or not, this could mean that the machines stop five minutes after we lock up, resulting in 16 hours of lost production and energy wasted.
We found that even though the actual moulding machine shuts itself down, the ancillary equipment such as conveyors and granulators were continuing to run. Just from one machine over a weekend, this cost us over £50 in electricity for no injection mouldings to be produced. If this happened on every machine, every weekend, this could result in over £30,000 of energy wasted.
The Solution
To overcome this issue, we have now come up with a system where if the machine is to stop for any reason, all ancillary equipment attached to the machine will automatically stop as well.
Our next step is to include the chillers and compressors so if all machines stop while unmanned, the chillers and compressors will also stop. As these pieces of equipment are our biggest energy consumers, this could make a huge difference to our electricity usage over the year.
All these measures that we are putting in place will result in us being able to bring our operating costs down. This will result in Plastic Supplies Dudley being able to give our customers a more competitive price for their products.
Looking for a plastic moulding company? Get in Touch
Are you looking for a premium service of injection moulding or automotive refinishing products? We take pride in our ability to offer first-rate moulding services to multiple industries.
If you would like to know more about how Plastic Supplies Dudley can help you, please get in touch by either calling 01384 77569, or emailing info@plasticsuppliesdudley.co.uk.