Evergreen Engineering® will help your facility focus on cost reduction through a well-directed review of your process, operations, and procedures. With our plant engineering, maintenance, and operations background, we can help you gain efficiency and increase your margin. We will identify opportunities, develop budgets for cost-effective solutions, and formulate long-range plans to prevent future bottlenecks. Serving American industry for 35 years, Evergreen has learned to quickly solve problems and increase returns by defining improvements, developing action plans, and implementing projects.
You may not be able to control what the market does, but you can control your costs. Lowering your costs will improve your margins during market down cycles.
Approach
- Identify procedural and technical issues to address immediate needs and provide fast payback
- Evaluate failure modes using root cause analysis techniques
- Assess and budget short-term projects that require minimal investment
- Develop prioritized plans with scope, budget, schedule, and payback
- Report on anticipated margin enhancement of short-term projects
- Implement low-cost improvements for process and productivity that provide quick yields
- Provide a preliminary assessment of long-term goals
Process Enhancement
The development of short- and long-term goals for plant process improvements, margin evaluation and prioritization, combined with a detailed maintenance survey, give plant management substantial insight into issues that will positively affect the profitability of the facility for years to come. Evergreen’s professional staff includes former plant managers, technical directors, maintenance managers, and engineering professionals who are uniquely qualified to assist with these tasks. We are ready to help you evaluate potential process upgrades with low-cost solutions, which may include:
- Improving raw materials management
- Improving moisture control
- Refining and milling upgrades
- Emissions control
- Minimizing product variation
- Line optimization and balancing
- Improving product mix and value creation
- Reducing machine damage
- Process and waste water management
- Reducing input cost and improving control
Energy Optimization
An energy survey is an evaluation tool to determine the energy usage of the facility, including electrical, natural gas, and steam. Such a survey can lead to a reduction in energy usage by identifying opportunities for improvements in energy efficiency that can enhance the operating margin of the plant. The energy survey evaluates items such as:
- Electrical power factor correction
- Thermal systems
- Lighting
- Environmental controls
- Milling and refining equipment
- Drying equipment
- Compressed air systems
- Electrical load leveling
Maintenance Enhancement Survey and Programs Upgrade
The maintenance survey is a detailed review of the maintenance program aimed at identifying opportunities to reduce maintenance costs, increase plant utilization, improve maintenance safety, track and evaluate failure root causes, reduce labor costs, and improve spare parts management. The maintenance survey includes:
- Maintenance management training
- Management by benchmarks
- Planning and scheduling
- Reliability engineering
- Maintenance safety
- Maintenance training development
- CMMS (maintenance management software)
- Preventative and predictive maintenance
- JIT (Just in Time) spare parts management
- Scheduling and organizing effectiveness
Outcomes
These surveys, recommendations, and upgrades lead to important gains within your mill, including:
- Lower costs
- Increased efficiency
- LEAN systems
- 8 Wastes reduction
- Defect reduction
- Project business case support
- Data-based decision framework