case studies - Dresser-Rand

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE—
QUALITY, COST AND
CYCLE TIME
Dresser-Rand implemented an ongoing
evaluation of Quality Assurance programs
for its operations and those of its suppliers.
The intent of this initiative is to continue
to maintain a proactive productivitybased
quality metric to link costs of
poor quality to volume; maintain a
high-level, productivity-based quality
improvement plan; and to focus on
preventing quality defects and defect
escapes to downstream processes.
Dresser-Rand aggressively pursues
quality in its developing country sourcing
program, which incents our legacy supply
companies to improve quality in order
to stay competitive. Our continued
focus is intended to improve our quality
year-over-year, but we still have much to
do in order to further improve cycle time
and delivery to our clients.
All of our Process Innovation and Supply
Chain management initiatives are focused
on improving quality, reducing cost,
reducing cycle time, and improving
on-time delivery—or in other words,
achieving Operational Excellence. We
have the right people in place to improve
cycle time and implement cost reduction;
now we need to focus on data and systems
in order to maximize and sustain these
improvements.
Our project prioritization process will
ensure that resources are efficiently
deployed with maximum impact on
the performance of the company. This
includes determining which operations
and suppliers need more support in order
to improve quality and reduce cycle time.
Actively pursuing supplier alternatives and
working with suppliers to reduce scrap and
rework help reduce costs.
Our strategy is to develop a supplier-toclient
on-time delivery culture across
execution teams and to improve on-time
delivery performance against agreed-to
dates defined in the project master
schedule.
RESPONSIBLY USING MATERIALS
AND ENERGY RESOURCES
We have initiatives underway throughout
the company to use material and energy
resources more responsibly, including
through the reduction of waste and
increased recycling. A few examples of
this are mentioned below.
Our plant in Naroda, India, operates a
solar water heating system. The system
provides heated water to the plant
and office buildings at a savings of
approximately 44,000 kWh of energy
per year. In addition, the plant conserves
energy by using variable-frequency drives
in its compressor test facility and on its
compressor cooling water tower.
ENVIRONMENT
During 2011, our Burlington, Iowa, plant
expanded its recycling effort, adding new
types of materials for recycling. For the
year, the volume of material going to local
landfill was more than 90% less than
2009 levels and consistent with 2010.
The Burlington facility received the Des
Moines County Landfill Sustainability
Award for recycling.
In 2011, our Naroda, India, plant installed
an electrostatic oil filtration system and
recycled 4,741 liters of oil for reuse. The
plant’s wood recycling program resulted
in the reuse of 582 cubic feet of wood,
and the plant reduced its paper usage by
implementing a two-sided printing policy
and recycled 264 kg of scrap paper. In
addition, each employee was provided a
water bottle and a mug for tea, eliminating
the use of paper cups.
WATER USE
Our Naroda plant installed a water
harvesting system in 2010. In 2011 they
installed an oil skimmer and 5-micron
filter system to continuously filter the
coolant solution, increasing coolant life
and reducing coolant and water usage.
PLANT BUILDING SOLAR
WATER HEATING SYSTEM
Use:
Component cleaning
Energy saved per year:
44,000 kWh
System:
40 collectors
Indirect heating capacity:
6,000 liters per day @
70 °C (158 °F)
CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 17