Does your company use ISO standards in order to improve business, quality, and service? Did you hear that later this year, ISO will publish a new global standard for energy management?

ISO 50001 will establish a framework for managing energy. In fact, it’s estimated that the ISO 50001 standard may influence over 60% of all energy produced and consumed in the world. The objective of ISO 50001 is to help organizations, large or small, improve their energy performance, increase energy efficiency, and reduce the environmental impact related to energy consumption.

Will your company be ready? Attaining ISO 50001 certification requires management commitment, accountability, responsibility, and the business systems and processes to achieve the intended level of energy performance. Ultimately, the goal is to optimize energy performance.

Want to learn more? View the full post on this topic, as well as other posts just like this on our Energizing EAM blog, which shares ideas and insights on sustainability, energy, reliability, and maintenance.

Posted by Rod Ellsworth, Vice President of Global Asset Sustainability, Infor

Congratulations to Mohawk Fine Papers, the number one ranked company on Computerworld’s list of the “Top Green-IT Organizations.”

What sets Mohawk apart is that its IT strategy for sustainability is “pervasive,” to quote Paul Stamas, vice president of IT for Mohawk. Their approach goes well beyond green IT measures like using energy efficient servers, to encompass using IT as an enabler to weave sustainable practices throughout the fiber of their operations.

The company has implemented green processes throughout its manufacturing, distribution, and facilities operations. Mohawk uses Infor ERP, supply chain, and enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions to help with this.

On Earth Day, I can’t think of a better sustainability role model than Mohawk Fine Papers.  As a company that is so dependent of natural resources, it’s taken a leadership role to make sure those resources will continue to be available for the next generation.

Read more about Mohawk’s commitment to sustainability, and view a video testimonial on how they are using Infor’s EAM software to reduce their energy consumption.

Posted by Rod Ellsworth, Vice President, Global Asset Sustainability

The call has been issued to US government agencies to improve their energy efficiency. Bringing change to an organization the size of the government can seem like turning a battleship, but new mandates and funding are on the way to help steer the ship.

In December 2007, the US Department of Energy finalized regulations that required all new federal buildings to be 30% more energy efficient than previous construction. The Obama administration has upped the ante to 40% in the next five years. In addition, the recent economic stimulus package includes a number of provisions to increase energy efficiency. The plan allocates close to $5 billion to improve the energy efficiency of nearly three-quarters of federal buildings. 

In addition, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program releases $2.6 billion in federal grants to units of local government, Indian tribes, states, and territories to reduce energy use and fossil fuel emissions. If you’re curious to know how this money is being allocated, check out this interactive map.

Much of this funding will be spent to retrofit current buildings; those improvements will include new windows, better lighting, and more efficient HVAC systems. Once these are installed and the initial benefits and cost savings are realized, government agencies need to ensure the upgraded equipment remains efficient to maximize the benefit to the environment and maintain cost savings.

Public sector organizations can save tax payer dollars and maximize green investments for the long term by following these guidelines:

1. Establish a baseline of energy usage. Once all of the upgrades have been completed, measure the energy required to operate the facility.


2. Monitor energy consumption on individual assets. While it’s important to monitor a facility’s overall consumption, you have to understand the behavior of each asset and how energy requirements change over time. This concrete data provides definitive evidence of where the problems are and how best to take corrective action.


3. Make energy a priority in your maintenance strategy. It’s one of the best kept secrets in maintenance—energy consumption is key to predicting future problems. Unexpected increases (or decreases) in energy consumption can help you identify the asset and determine the cause of the problem before it escalates. This saves energy and also reduces the cost of future maintenance, inventory, and equipment failure.


4. Deploy software tools that incorporate energy to drive a strategic asset management program for your facilities. The complexity of modern facilities makes it nearly impossible for individuals to tackle this task alone. Enterprise asset management solutions that track energy consumption take the burden of juggling thousands of assets at once off facility managers.

For a closer look at the role of enterprise asset management for energy efficiency at facilities, see our report on Infor EAM and Continuous Commissioning. Developed by Texas A&M University, Continuous Commissioning is a facilities operations program implemented at over 300 Federal buildings, resulting in a 20% reduction in utility costs and a payback in less than two years.

Posted by Bob Benstead, VP Strategic Planning, Infor Public Sector

The question on everyone’s mind today is: How will the global economic downturn impact green and sustainability initiatives? The easy assumption to make is that the only green that matters in a recession is the kind that you can put in your wallet.

In my opinion, the recession may signal a real beginning for sustainability. Leaner times are moving industry past the marketing of sustainability -the faddish, feel-good “green washing” that merely scratches the surface- toward initiatives that deliver real and immediate operational benefits. Companies get excited about ROI and profitability. There are ample opportunities within organizations for sustainability initiatives to deliver just that.

Infor recently commissioned a survey of manufacturing companies in the UK. Over half of the survey respondents said they had no plans to postpone their green investments due to the economic climate. In fact, 56% said they plan to increase their investments over the next 12 months. Even for companies that don’t see a direct operational benefit, many are moving forward because of the business risk associated with doing nothing.

Stephen Stokes of AMR Research pointed this out on a recent Infor-hosted webinar, “Carbon Management: The Business Imperative.”  Stephen is Vice President of Sustainability and Green Technologies at AMR, so he knows quite a bit about the subject to say the least. (I encourage anyone who needs a primer on the green transformation to download the webinar recording because Stephen offers many valuable insights.)

Stephen’s research (illustrated in the slides below) indicates that companies today are most concerned with real time costs, primarily energy. By 2010 though, risks from government regulations, carbon footprinting, and carbon trading grow significantly in the eyes of executives. Many of these same executives are moving now to stay ahead of legislation, which is already happening in places like the UK, Europe, and Australia.

What does all this mean for green technologies? In my opinion, it validates Infor’s approach from the beginning. Our view was that companies would invest in green technologies that provided tangible economic benefit and reduced business risk. These are primarily at the line of business level- energy efficiency in facilities, reducing fleet fuel consumption, reducing the carbon impact of your distribution network, and eliminating waste in manufacturing processes- through solutions like network design for the supply chain, enterprise asset management, and product lifecycle management. 

Dashboards and corporate-wide reporting efforts are important, especially longer term, but these kinds of broad technology initiatives are the ones that will struggle during the recession, in my opinion, because they don’t directly address immediate business imperatives. It’s much easier to sell management on sustainability projects with a clear ROI, ones that impact the bottom line or eliminate business risk, and then build on those successes.

For these reasons, I think sustainability is poised for a new beginning. And the real champions of green through the recession will be the plant managers, facilities directors, and supply chain professionals rather the corporate vice president of sustainability.

Posted by Andrew Kinder, Director of Product Marketing, Supply Chain Management