My First Green Blog
My name is Brad Heath and I am the president of VirTex Assembly Services, an electronic manufacturing services company in Austin, TX. I’ve set up this blog to talk about things companies are doing to be more environmentally friendly in manufacturing. A lot of companies are doing a lot of cool stuff, some of it very minor and some major. Every bit helps.
At VirTex, we just went to a four day work week (4 days10 hours per day) at the request of our emplyees. This allows them to save the gas that they would have spent driving to work the 5th day. It also allows us to reduce the power usage in air conditioning the manufacturing area and powering up the SMT reflow machines. I’m not sure how much it will save, but it’s a good first step and the right thing to do.
A Canadian newspaper even picked up the story and included it in a recent article.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080920.RWORKOUT20/TPStory/Business
We’ll keep looking for new ways to be better corporate citizens.
Brad
December 31, 2008 at 10:10 am
Dear Brad,
I was just using google’s blog search browsing for ideas in the aera of green manufacturing. Considering the title of your blog, it does not seem too surprising that I ended up on your blog.
The idea of a 4 day, 10h/d week and the arguments for energy savings that go along with it are very interesting. Do you have any data on the energy savings and your factory’s productivity by now? I did an internship in a PCB assembly company (one of the largest suppliers for the car industry in the world) a couple of years ago. However, they were working in three shifts, so your approach was no option for them at the time. Nowadays, in the context of the global financial crisis it might become an option for them.
My blog is called “Sustainable Manufacturing in China” and accordingly it has a similar focus, that is why I will read through more of your articles and refer to them in my blog. Coincidentally, it was, like yours, created in September 2008
Kind regards
Carsten
January 5, 2009 at 3:11 am
We are still quantifying the productivity increase, but it is a definite inmprovement and employee morale is also improved. Everyone likes three day weekends and when we do need overtime, people still get plenty of family time. I’ll check out your blog. As we have partners in China, it is ofspecial interest. Thanks.
Brad
January 11, 2009 at 1:55 pm
[...] A very interesting approach to greener manufacturing can be found here. VirTex Assembly Services, an electronic manufacturing services company in Austin, USA, changed [...]