Episode 02 – Situation report: Simplified audit
A descriptive text to introduce the page and whet the appetite for more.
Welcome to TETRIS, the way to Factory 4.0!
In this first season, you will discover our 5-step roadmap for improving your plant’s environmental performance.
Here are the 5 steps:
Step 1 – Taking stock to prepare the ground.
Step 2 – Detailed analysis, where we explore your plant in depth.
Step 3 – Adjustments to optimize your plant’s performance.
Step 4 – Guidelines and master plan, to define and structure your ideal factory.
Step 5 – Continuous improvement to sustain your environmental performance.
In just one sentence, can you tell us, Sébastien, what a simplified audit entails?
It means assessing the maturity of each site’s environmental performance. So why simplify? Because it’s not a detailed audit, and we’re going to collect the first data, whether it’s consumption, energy or production data. Every plant knows its monthly energy consumption, since that’s what we call the bill. So the plant will have at least monthly data. We’ll also be able to retrieve production data, which can be either tons of finished products, or even tons of finished products by type of product.
Once we’ve collected this data, what else can we do?
Next, the simplified audit involves discussions with the company’s various stakeholders: management, management control, which will take an interest in energy through budgeting and invoice monitoring. It also involves technical discussions with maintenance, technical services and environmental managers.
It seems to me that there are also interviews to be carried out with people in the field, in the factory, the production teams, isn’t that right?
Absolutely, interviews with production to find out their energy or water requirements for production and to see how they see these issues. It’s the production workshops that consume all the energy and utilities. All these utilities are consumed by the process.
The aim is to assess the maturity of the sites’ environmental performance, and to find out whether we’re at the stage where we’re paying our bills, or whether we’ve already put things in place (are we already ISO 50001?). These are very different stages.
Do some plants already have an energy manager to deal with all these issues?
Indeed, the presence of an energy advisor already shows a certain maturity on the part of an industrial site. I’m still surprised, after 25 years in the
What is the main benefit of improving the energy and environmental performance of an industrial site?
Energy and environmental performance is seen above all from a financial point of view. You improve your energy efficiency, reduce your energy and water consumption, and in the end, all this translates into euros.
How long does a simplified audit take?
It takes one, two or three days, depending on the complexity of the plant. We’ve already done simplified audits in one day. What can influence this is the size and complexity of the site.
Is a simplified audit compulsory?
No, it’s not a requirement. It’s not a regulatory audit. For us, the simplified audit is more of an inventory phase, but “simplified”. The aim is to evaluate, in a short space of time, the company’s maturity on the subject of environmental performance.
Who can carry out the simplified audit, and what skills are required?
To carry out a simplified audit, you need an expert who can quickly understand the plant and ask the right questions of the various stakeholders. He or she will also be able to synthesize all the data.
In a nutshell
Initial mapping is the division of a plant into blocks. This breakdown into blocks becomes your standard to impose when an external or internal player comes to analyze your plant.
Initial mapping gives you a synthetic, global view of all your plant’s processes and flows.
It allows you to :
- Visualize all plant components, from raw materials to finished products, processes and utilities.
- Finally, it provides the basis for defining THE standard for your plant.
In short, initial mapping is the starting point for your industrial environmental transition.
