Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pliers on the operation of air pollution control equipment. They subsequently learned
how to install and operate both electro-static precipators (ESP) and bag
lters (BF). By
2002, SCCC had 87 BFs and 9 ESPs installed in factory 1, 168 BFs and 13 ESPs installed
in factory 2, and 223 BFs and 13 ESPs installed in factory 3 (SCCC, 2002). Because SCCC
has been so successful in acquiring environmental capabilities, dust and SO 2 emissions
from its kiln stacks are quite low (varying from 23 to 85 mg/m 3 of dust between 1999 and
2001, and 1.71 ppm to 3.41 ppm SO 2 ).
Following the East Asian
fi
nancial crisis, Holcim Ltd, a Swiss cement multinational,
acquired a 30% share in SCCC. This linkage enabled engineers at SCCC to further
advance their production and environmental process capabilities. Engineers at SCCC
learned through Holcim's internal plant benchmarking process that a number of their
production lines were the most productive, e
fi
cient, 2 and least polluting plants in the
Holcim group. Moreover, SCCC's environmental performance exceeds Holcim's guide-
lines for emissions of dust, NO x and SO 2 . SCCC engineers also learned how to design,
manage and implement an aggressive alternative fuels and raw materials (AFRM)
program introduced by Holcim - one that signi
fi
cantly reduced CO 2
emissions (SCCC,
2002, pp. 20-21).
SCCC's long-term investments in technological capabilities building appear to have
paid o
cant energy cost savings, the pollution intensity of cement
production at SCCC converged to international best practice. This would have been
impossible without SCCC's internal investments in technological learning and its inter-
national ties to the Holcim group.
Similar environmental improvements are visible at Motorola and Motorola's wholly
owned subsidiary in Penang, Malaysia. There the company worked closely with its local
suppliers to insure that its electronics products would be compliant with the Restriction
of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste from Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE) directives of the EU. But Motorola's attention to
ff
. Beyond very signi
fi
rm-based envi-
ronmental standards cannot be separated from a broader set of institutional develop-
ments within the corporation that began with the creation of the Motorola Training and
Education Center in the 1970s (MTEC) (Meyer, 1996a, 1996b). While MTEC focused on
continuous quality improvements in production (Meyer, 1996b), it was subsequently
expanded to cover all aspects of Motorola's business (Barney, 2002), including environ-
mental health and safety (EHS).
Integration of environmental health and safety concerns into quality management
practices began in 1993 when Motorola conducted a series of environmental audits of its
facilities worldwide. 3
fi
c audits, the company moved to a
common EHS management system requiring all subsidiaries to meet a set of corporate
environmental expectations (Motorola, 2002). Subsequently, the Motorola-Penang facil-
ity replaced its health and safety team with an EHS committee while Motorola introduced
a set of global
In the midst of these site-speci
fi
fi
rm-based environmental standards that covered performance, procedures
and suppliers.
With respect to performance, Motorola developed speci
rm-wide quantita-
tive environmental goals for reducing volatile organic compounds, hazardous air emis-
sions, per
fi
c global
fi
uorocarbon (PFC) use, hazardous waste, and water and energy consumption
(Motorola, 2002). These operational goals are buttressed by longer-range improvement
goals including zero waste, benign emissions and closed-loop recycling of all natural
fl
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