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Summary

SKF USA Inc., a ball bearings manufacturer located in Flowery Branch, Georgia, uses employee teams to identify and implement waste reduction and recycling opportunities throughout the facility. Projects implemented by the team have resulted in cost savings through reduced waste generation and disposal costs.

Background

SKF employs approximately 425 people to manufacture deep groove ball bearings. Many of the plant's production areas operate seven days a week, twenty-four hours per day.

SKF formed a ten member task team in December 1995 to address recycling and waste reduction issues at their facility. The team's mission statement is as follows: "To reach zero waste by the year 2000 and to comply with the SKF corporate 'clean' policy directives through point source reduction, recycling, and reuse."

The team's thirteen members represent all areas of SKF, including manufacturing, purchasing, shipping and receiving, human resources, environmental and safety, engineering, maintenance, and janitorial staff. The team meets monthly to discuss reduction and recycling projects that have been completed and new ones that are starting. Minutes of team meetings are posted so other SKF employees are kept informed of the wastestreams being addressed.

The approach used by the team for any particular wastestream is to form smaller subteams of 2-4 members. The subteams are responsible for gathering data about wastestreams and investigating appropriate source reduction, reuse, and/or recycling methods. This approach has allowed the task team to successfully tackle a wide variety of projects.

P2 Modifications and Results

Waste Oil

The manufacture of ball bearings generates large volumes of waste oil and waste coolant (a mixture of oil and water). In an effort to reduce the volume of waste oils while improving the cost effectiveness of recycling, a program was instituted for proactively identifying and correcting machine leaks. In addition, a new ultrafiltration system was installed to separate water from oil for recycling. These reduction efforts have helped decrease waste oil generation from over 150,000 gallons in 1995, to 75,000 gallons in 1996. Recycling costs were cut by 50 percent.

Grinding Swarf

Grinding swarf, an oil saturated mixture of powdered steel and grinding abrasives, is a large volume solid waste for SKF due to the nature of their manufacturing process. SKF had previously been landfilling swarf at a rate of approximately 25 tons per week. After exploring many different options, the grinding swarf team found a recycling company to accept the swarf, eliminating hauling and landfill fees on over 2,000,000 pounds of swarf annually.

Grease and Grease Drums

A subteam is working with grease suppliers to provide grease in reusable/returnable totes rather than in drums. This would reduce the labor involved in changing grease drums out, drum disposal, and the amount of waste grease generated. The possibility of using totes for some liquids is also currently being assessed by a new drums and liquids subteam.

Pallets

When the pallets and scrap wood subteam first assessed the wood wastestream, they discovered that pallets were being landfilled at a rate of approximately 34 tons per month at a cost of more than $13,000 annually. During 1996, the team took steps that resulted in recycling 65 percent of the pallets generated by the plant. Steps included identifying the different sizes of pallets, creating a pallet reclamation area, and contacting suppliers to request they take back useable pallets.

Four of SKF's suppliers now reclaim an average of 200 pallets per week. A local packaging company picks up other useable pallets each week at no charge. Currently, the subteam is considering the economics of purchasing a shredder or mulcher to chip some small, odd-sized pallets generated by the plant. The chipped material could potentially be used as a ground cover on the SKF property. Through these efforts, the team has successfully reduced pickup of pallets destined for the landfill from twice to once per week.

Employee Awareness

The task team has also made efforts to introduce their ideas to the entire SKF plant by distributing a newsletter, hosting two appreciation days for the plant's workers, and providing fruit for employees with the money generated from recycling small items such as batteries and wire.