A Franklin manufacturing plant where workers make more than 8 million automobile parts every year has been honored for its efforts to become more green.
KYB Americas Corporation was recently recognized with the 2019 Industrial Plant of the Year Award by the Indiana Industrial Operation Association, an agency that helps professionals with wastewater treatment.
The company earned the award for its achievements in waste water quality and environmental management. KYB has engineered ways to reduce the amount of water its plant uses when painting and building their shocks and struts, as well as striving to make the water they use cleaner in its own pre-treatment processes.
KYB was one of about a dozen companies considered for the statewide award and met all the criteria, which include not committing environmental crimes and actively doing something to reduce environmental impact, Martha Martin, business manager for the Indiana Industrial Operation Association said.
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Jerry Reamer, director of production engineering at the plant, was also honored with the 2019 Industrial Operator of the Year award.
The company made reducing water usage one of its goals to help maintain permits and meet regulations. But, the company also has an interest in going green, Reamer said.
"We ensure the protection of the environment," he said.
Company engineers have designed and built two systems in the plant that are now being used daily to help the roughly 750 plant employees cut down water usage to less than one gallon per car part built. The two systems together save about 11,000 gallons of water daily compared to what was being used before the systems were built, Reamer said.
Water usage at the plant is mostly used to clean parts off before they are painted, and as a quick cooling method as part of the fabrication process. The plant reduced its water usage by 41 percent between 2015 and 2018. KYB used about 21,100 gallons of water daily in 2018, compared to 35,550 gallons of water daily in 2015.
Part of that is due to the amount of parts manufactured at the plant, which has dropped from about 42,500 daily in 2015 to 33,900 daily in 2018. But the water saving measures have still reduced the amount of water needed to produce each part, Reamer said.
In the past, workers used to work three paint production lines. But, plant officials made two lines more productive and were able to shut the third line down, he said.
One of the machines that was built and used on the painting lines uses counter flow rinses, which reduces the amount of fresh water needed to clean each part, Reamer said.
Water is also used to quickly cool a piece of a car part to ensure quality production. A machine was built to use less water during that production step too, he said.
"It is just using simple engineering," Reamer said.
Part of the award was given not for just reducing water waste, but also for the high quality of the plant’s on-site pre-treatment facility, which treats water that leaves the plant.
The pre-treatment part of the plant had no violations during inspections, and is successful in keeping chemicals out of the water that is treated at the plant. The main reason is an overall attitude of maintaining pristine water from the six technicians who work in the pre-treatment plant 24 hours a day, said Jim Fields, KYB chemical technician supervisor.
"I tell guys we let no water out of here that I wouldn’t want to drink," he said.
