Sustainability Roundtable – June 2012

8:00 am – 8:30 am	Registration/Continental Breakfast
8:30 am – 8:45 am	Introduction/Welcome	Rick Jarman, President and CEO, NCMS
8:45 am – 9:15 am	Meeting the Manufacturing Sustainability Challenge	Dr. David Cole,  Chairman Emeritus, Center for Automotive Research (CAR) and  Chairman and Co-founder, AutoHarvest
9:15 am – 10:30 am	Panel: Building Sustainability into Product Design	Moderator:Steve Zimmer, Executive Director, USCARPanelists:David Tulauskas, Director of Sustainability, General Motors Dr. Hyung Chul Kim, Research Lab, Materials, Ford Motor CompanyDr. Nabil Nasr, Rochester Institute of Technology John Chalifoux, – Motor & Equipment Remanufacturers Association
10:30 am – 10:45 am	Break/Networking
10:45 am – 12:00 noon	Panel – Materials & Coatings Sustainability Challenges	Moderator:Ron Krupitzer, Exec. Director, Steel Marketing Development InstitutePanelists:Dan Steinmetz, Manager, Product Stewardship and Sustainability Programs, BASFDave Darling, American Coatings AssociationTim Weingartz, Materials Manager Paint Engineering, Ford Motor Company Meghan Oaks, Research Engineer, Applied Process, Inc.
12:00 noon  – 1:00 pm	Lunch and Keynote	John Viera, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Matters, Ford Motor Company
1:00 pm – 1:30 pm	NCMS LCA Toolkit Demonstration	Dr. Manish Mehta, Exec. Director, Sustainability and Public Forums, NCMS
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm	Panel  – Knowing Your Customers’ Sustainability Needs	Moderator:  Dr. Richard J. Gerth,  National Automotive Center, Tank Automotive Research and Development CenterPanelists:Dr. Ann P. Kalayil, Regional Administrator, Genera l Services Administration, Great Lakes RegionTammy Ayers, CPT, Global Environmental Sustainability, Steelcase Inc. Bryce Feighner, Chief, Office of Environmental Assistance, MI Department of Environmental  QualityDr. Rajan Eadara, Vice President, Research and Development, Diversified Chemical Technologies Charleen Fain-Keslar, Mgr, Standards & Quality Control, CA Department of General Services
3:00 pm – 3:15 pm	Break/Networking
3:15 pm – 3:35 pm	Meeting the Challenge through Collaboration	Jay Richardson, Technical Principal, Sustainable Water Works
3:35 pm – 3:55 pm	Next Steps	Dr. Chuck Ryan, VP Technology, NCMS

Over the years, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) has led many collaborative initiatives centered on the environment and sustainability in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy through grants totaling over $10M. For example, NCMS currently manages and/or hosts eleven Compliance Assistance Centers (CACs) under grants from the EPA.  The CACs’ provide easy to read and understand pollution prevention and environmental regulatory compliance information and tools for several industry sectors (e.g., heavy manufacturing, construction, paints and coatings, healthcare, transportation).  Other initiatives include industry surveys and benchmarking for EPA and DOE.

In 2008, NCMS expanded its mission to include Sustainable Manufacturing as a cornerstone of its business model.  In November, 2008 NCMS hosted its first Executive Roundtable on Sustainable Manufacturing chaired by the Honorable Debbie Stabenow, U.S. Senate.  Since that time, through funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, NCMS has developed a complete toolkit for manufacturers to assess the impact of their products on the environment through all their lifecycle phases including material sourcing, manufacturing, use, and end of life or reuse.  This information is critical to understand the ramifications of industrial business decisions during the early design phases and later as the manufacturing process is defined, and ultimately, the ability for products to be recycled or remanufactured.  This suite of tools has been created with industry participation.

A second Roundtable is being organized to provide corporate stakeholders with an understanding of how these NCMS-developed tools can be applied in the early stage of design to advance sustainability initiatives while improving the manufacturers’ bottom-line — producing products that reflect  life cycle thinking.  To achieve this, the design must “begin” with the “end” in mind.  To be able to produce a truly sustainable product, its carbon footprint, health and the greenhouse impacts must be considered and understood up front.  The NCMS Sustainability Toolkit and data-driven approaches pave the way for standardized methods to predict outcomes for select manufacturing sectors.

Europe and Japan have implemented ISO 14040 type standards and international companies are increasingly challenging suppliers to provide more information on the impacts of materials and processes that support their global product platforms. In the US, California, Wisconsin and other states as well as government acquisition agencies have, or are considering, sustainability requirements for the products they purchase.  NCMS has taken a leadership role in developing these approaches with EPA and its industry and academic partners.  Questions for this Roundtable to consider include:

• Do we really know our customers’ sustainability requirements – now and into the future?
• What are the challenges of designing truly sustainable products?
• What LCA (Lifecycle Analysis) tools are available to help meet those challenges?
• Is there support for further development and expansion of the NCMS LCA tools into other manufacturing sectors further reducing costs and improving sustainability for manufacturing?

NCMS is a 25-year old member-driven, not-for-profit organization that uses a collaborative process to accelerate R&D into the real manufacturing world.  A key goal of the Roundtable would be to gain buy-in and support for a Strategic Interest Group (SIG) driving standardization of LCA tools across many manufacturing sectors.  The Sustainability SIG, being convened by NCMS, would focus on risk-reduction in industrial product design through use of sustainable materials and manufacturing.  The SIG would be used first to populate the current tools with the most accurate and up to date alternatives for designers, engineers and manufacturers to use in early stage product development and ultimately expand across multiple industries.  As a neutral third party, NCMS can provide unbiased and secure data storage and analysis using industry standard algorithms to derive pertinent LCA impacts.

Article:

NCMS Talks Sustainable Manufacturing

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/ncms-talks-sustainable-manufacturing/

Podcasts:

NCMS Sustainable Manufacturing Conference Part 1

WWJ Newsradio 950 Technology Editor, Matt Roush talks with Rick Jarman, NCMS President and CEO, about sustainable manufacturing.

NCMS Sustainable Manufacturing Conference Part 2

Matt Roush talks with Nabil Nasr, Director of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology, about the hallmarks of sustainable manufacturing.

NCMS Sustainable Manufacturing Conference Part 3

Matt Roush talks with Rajan Eadara, Vice President of Research and Development at Adhesive Systems Inc., DVT Inc. and Recycled Polymetric Materials Inc., all of Detroit, about how they’re using agricultural and recycled products in auto parts, including some exported to China.

Coming Soon!