How the above initiatives are supported by off the shop-floor activities? What has been combined the impact of these initiatives? / Successfully adopting ‘Green manufacturing principles', along with having a positive approach to the environment, requires comprehensive involvement of employees. How are you educating and engaging your people in this journey?
Environment is a key metric on the Global Ford Production System and forms a vital part of each Ford plant's overall performance metric. The corporate environment policy is cascaded to employees as part of their initial orientation, besides which we have periodic refresher training for staff and employees.
We also work towards constant engagement with the employees. This covers a broad spectrum, right from facilitating easy waste segregation on the shop-floor at the simplest level, to encouraging healthy competition among the work-groups.
Every year, associates in the Chennai plant work together to execute workplace improvements that can result in significant energy savings. Currently, the Chennai plant has almost 300 work groups who champion innovations and workplace improvements every day.
A recent example of such collaboration resulted in the engine plant's Materials, Planning and Logistics (MP&L) team reducing carton and wood wastage. The innovative solution identified by the team helped reduce the total waste generated by the engine plant in 2014 to just 26 percent of the total waste generated in 2013.
The proof of all these efforts is visible when each shop-floor is checked individually for resource depletion. It's a matter of pride that on a year-on-year basis, every shop-floor here has been recording improvements on all environment items.
We also leverage other opportunities to rope in participation from the employees towards creating a greener world. In fact, as part of the recent World Environment Day, we distributed more than 2000 saplings to employees and encouraged them to nurture them in the years to come, besides showcasing messages highlighting the importance of conservation.
In the past, as part of our annual volunteer-driven initiative - the Global Week of Caring - our employees have undertaken tree sapling planting initiatives, awareness campaigns on the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and the importance of waste segregation, reaching out to residents of nearby villages.
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