A systematic approach to energy saving

ISO 50001 is the name of the standard for establishing a rigorous and comprehensive energy management system at BMA. Its implementation is having many positive effects on our company.

BMA’s energy management objectives are to follow a systematic approach at our Braunschweig site in order to reduce total energy consumption and improve both energy efficiency and energy use. We reached a major milestone in 2012, with the creation of our energy management framework. Since then, an internal team has been dealing with the ISO 50001:2011 standard.

One priority is to identify energy saving opportunities. In order to have a benchmark value for energy management, the team has been collecting data on the most important energy sources and energy consumers. This will serve as the basis for a comparison of potential savings. Our aim is to reduce energy consumption by two percent every year, and to break down use of the energy sources to individual cost centres, down to machine level in production. For this purpose, BMA has drawn up an action plan with the most important saving opportunities and payback periods. This will be followed by extensive investments in buildings and infrastructure technology at the Braunschweig site.

In the implementation of a sustainable energy management, BMA relies on ways of improving the infrastructure, and also on its teams of employees. Internal training courses are aimed at raising awareness of energy saving. Switching off lights when you go home, buying efficient computers, installing motion sensors to control the lights – all these are simple measures that offer considerable saving opportunities. Another one is the choice of transport. We are an international company and, when it comes to business travel, often check whether road or rail can be used instead of air travel. Already today, BMA is increasingly relying on video and telephone conferencing for communication with customers around the globe.

Energy saving measures are implemented both in our administration and in production. In many workshop areas, we have been replacing old lighting systems with modern LED lights. And we have been looking closely at the production of compressed air: every year, the compressed-air network is checked with a leak detector, and any leaks found are repaired immediately.

A first look back: to date, all actions taken by BMA have been very successful. We have achieved total energy savings of 15 percent. Energy management at BMA is a continual process involving the whole company and every BMA employee is actively helping to shape it. Thanks to our system of suggestions for improvement, even small actions can have huge benefits. Decisive and forward actions will in the long term result in cost savings, with a positive impact on the use of resources. By reducing environmental operating costs, we are meeting our social and environmental responsibilities.

All our actions are documented and reviewed in an external audit process. In 2020, the external audit ran concurrently with ISO 9001 for the first time, saving time and money. Please click here for our certificates.