The winners of Plexus Corp’s inaugural Environmental Sustainability category in the company’s BEST (Bringing Employee Successes Together) awards have been praised for finding a way to cut their monthly water consumption by 93 per cent.
The team at Plexus’s site in Oradea, Romania, implemented innovative updates to the way the facility used water and succeeded in not only dramatically reducing consumption, but also decreasing the plant’s power needs, by a third (32 per cent). The changes mean the site’s total carbon footprint has been reduced by 3 per cent.
Plexus is the UK’s largest Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) company, with sites across Asia, North America and Europe, including Scotland. Last year, the team at Plexus’s Kelso site in the Scottish borders won a BEST Award for reducing energy across its site by 20 per cent.
The project at Oradea was borne out of the need to respond to challenging local environmental conditions; 75 per cent of Romania is affected by drought at present and, as a result, the country’s cereal crop is predicted to drop by 30 million tonnes.
Through a process of iterative development, testing and technical innovation, the Oradea team was able to successfully carry through a water-saving project which resulted in:
- 93% reduction in monthly water consumption
- 32% reduction in monthly power usage
- 3% overall reduction in the site’s carbon footprint
The team’s efforts were recognized at Plexus’ annual BEST (Bringing Employee Successes Together) awards, where they triumphed in its inaugural Environmental Sustainability category. The awards reward the most innovative, effective and socially conscious individuals across the Plexus family each year.
Attila Barsony, Facilities Manager at the Oradea facility, praised the team:
“I’m really proud of the team who worked with me on this project. Being able to see such tangible results far beyond our expectations is really rewarding.”
Megan Schleicher, Senior Director for ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) added:
“We are thrilled to have introduced Environmental Sustainability as an official category at BEST in 2022, which this year saw projects focused on emissions reductions through equipment optimization and energy reduction, transitions to renewable energy as well as parts recovery capabilities to avoid waste to landfill.
“The Oradea team were very worthy winners given the remarkable impact of their project on the site’s water and energy consumption. It is inspiring to see how these projects in addition to other Plexus environmental sustainability efforts will help us to deliver on our mission to create a better world by the way we innovate and operate. I’m really excited to see what the teams come up with for next year’s competition.”
Innovation in Oradea
The team at Oradea installed a water meter to measure actual consumption, which found that the HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system – installed in 2013 – was the site’s most water-intensive component, using enough to water each month to fill the equivalent of almost two Olympic swimming pools.
Maintaining stable humidity levels within Plexus’ manufacturing spaces is essential to ensuring ESD (electronic discharge compliance), and for this reason the HVAC system was a critical component of the site’s manufacturing infrastructure. With this in mind, the team set a target to reduce the HVAC’s water consumption by 30 per cent, all the time maintaining humidity compliance (30 to 60%RH).
Through an exacting process of technical analysis and planning, the team identified three options for reducing water usage in line with their 30 per cent target:
- Optimise the current system – This was ruled out early as the improvements would have been marginal.
- Re-use the water by capturing the waste and re-routing it back into the site – This was dismissed as prohibitively expensive as the wastewater would need to be treated before being re-used.
- Separate humidification from the HVAC system and install a new system – The team considered steam generator systems, dry fog spray systems and high-pressure water spray systems.
The team considered all three options at length and concluded that installing a new high-pressure water spray system was likely to be the best solution. Extensive testing confirmed this decision. The team also worked to optimise the new high-pressure water spray system, and the results far exceeded their expectations.
Not only did the new system completely stabilise humidity levels across the site within the required levels, but also the resulting savings in water and power consumption greatly surpassed the team’s initial targets. They were also able to remove all potential health and safety concerns related to cleaning the old system.
The Oradea team won $5,000 USD, with funds from the Plexus Charitable Foundation going to the charity of their choice. As their project focused on improving the natural environment, the team chose to support an organisation that directly aligns with this area of focus, the ‘Millions of Friends Association.’ Based in Romania, the Millions of Friends Association maintains the biggest brown bear sanctuary in the world. They rescue brown bears from miserable conditions and allow them to enjoy life in their natural environment within the sanctuary. They also rescue injured stray dogs, caring for them until they find adoptive families, as well as educating children on how to care for animals.
Plexus, which has operated in Romania since 2010, opened the Oradea Design Centre in 2013 to provide complex engineering solutions to companies in demanding regulatory markets, including healthcare and life sciences, aerospace and defence and industrial.
