Part 3 of Developing a Successful ISO 50001 Compliant Energy Management Process

Part 3 of 6: Energy Management Process

It is now time to move into the “Rationalize” phase of the process to identify key improvement opportunities that will allow an organization to fully understand their current conditions and improve upon those conditions. The focus here is to understand the selected value stream in a way that makes analysis possible and, using relative processes and system data, create business case scenario simulations that will lead to a deeper understanding of the losses in the value stream and the appropriate areas of improvement moving forward.

High level steps in this phase are shown below:

Keeping the intent of the standard in mind, let’s discuss the high level steps in this “Rationalize” phase.

• Energy Baseline – The sole purpose of this step is to identify key opportunities for improvement and create a strategic and tactical plan to maximize the return on investment from the implementation of an Energy Management initiative. The objective is to examine and evaluate current business processes and practices as related to energy usage and determine the major energy consuming systems and equipment within the facility or plant. This analysis will serve as a baseline and foundation for the implementation activities driven in the “Ratify” and “Resolve” phases.
  
  The many steps in this phase include; data gathering, observations, on-site interviews, data analysis, planning and building the business case. All of these steps serve to increase the awareness throughout the organization of the impact energy management can have on the business. Participation in the process facilitates organizational alignment as the future state becomes clearer and the stake each department and individual holds in the improvement process is defined. This alignment/buy-in is critical to the effective implementation of cultural and behavioral change associated with adopting energy management best practices.
  

It is vital that the facility/plant operation be addressed holistically as it will promote energy management throughout the organization. Experience shows that a collaborative relationship between all functions of a business (maintenance, engineering, production, procurement, quality, finance and regulatory compliance) is critical to success. The integration and interdependencies that exist between these functions of an organization can greatly impact the potential of energy management and the overall business performance.

While the output of this phase serves as the baseline for all energy management implementation and opportunities within an organization, it is important to realize that companies must take logical controlled steps to successfully implement such initiatives or programs across their organization. To do so, I believe a prioritized effort based upon ROI is required to fully rollout. This concept will become clear throughout the next two phases, “Ratify” and “Resolve”, of the R5 process.

Similar to how I wrapped up Part 2 of this series, I want to point out where these steps align with the ISO 50001 standard.

• Energy Planning (Section 4.4)
• General (Section 4.4.1)
• Legal requirements and other requirements (Section 4.4.2)
• Energy review (Section 4.4.3)
• Energy baseline (Section 4.4.4)
• Energy performance indicators (Section 4.4.5)
• Energy objectives, energy targets and energy management action plans (Section 4.4.6)

I hope this has been informative and will you continue to follow this blog as next time I plan to discuss the “Ratify” phase of the R5 process. As always, I appreciate the feedback so feel free to drop me a line at colsonc@alliedreliability.com.