Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for maintenance engineers
Sustainable development is widely defined as: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
CSR is a key aspect of corporate business at present, and a great example of how global thinking is changing, with more people realising that any long-term future we have, has to be a sustainable one. Eriks has taken its usual pragmatic approach to the subject and found that there are solid practical local benefits to be had from a partnership approach to the high and mighty aspiration of building a sustainable global future.
Sustainable development is widely defined as: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. It is not something that can be achieved in isolation; rather, it requires a holistic approach to meet the challenges of a broad range of issues, from generally investing in innovation to specific areas of improvement such as offering energy saving solutions, reducing friction in power transmission systems and providing high technology sealing solutions.
The high number and ongoing nature of these potential changes call for a partnership approach to Sustainable Development, and no company is better equipped or prepared to provide it than ERIKS, with its unrivalled portfolio of products, key technical personnel and Europe-wide research facilities.
“The biggest contribution that ERIKS can make to ensuring more effective use of our natural resources is through our customers’ use of our products and services,” said Jan van der Zouw, ERIKS CEO. “Sustainability is at the core of who we are and what we do. Energy efficiency – with its large social, economic, and environmental implications – is a benefit tied to many of our products, services, and our own operations.
“We have made significant steps during the past year by developing many new sealing compounds, new energy saving power transmission parts and high-performance flow control components. We have set enterprise-wide environmental, energy, and safety goals, and we continue to use the skills and solutions that we provide to our customers to help us meet their goals.”
ERIKS is also an ISO 14001 accredited company, an internationally accepted standard that sets out how you can go about putting in place an effective Environmental Management System (EMS). The standard is designed to address the delicate balance between maintaining profitability and reducing environmental impact; with the commitment of an entire organisation it can achieve both objectives. Achieving ISO 14001 involves active measures such as designing, planning and implementing environmental policy, and setting up regular reviews and making continuous improvements, checking and taking corrective action.
ERIKS commitment to sustainable development is underlined by the appointment of senior ERIKS employee, Louis De Hertogh, to support and shape ERIKS Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Policy at Group Level.
“We are facing issues such as global warming, and the fact that we only have a finite quantity of raw materials and minerals at our disposal,” said Mr De Hertogh. “This means that society has to change. An important issue for ERIKS is how we can help our customers achieve sustainability in their business operations. How we can help cut our own energy consumption and emissions through our products, services and know-how. We also need to determine how we can influence the use of CO2. With all these issues, CSR is set to become a major defining element in the operations of all ERIKS Group companies.”
We have set a series of objectives for 2010–13, these include determining the carbon footprint of the products we supply, extending our ‘green’ product range, and introducing codes to identify green products for our suppliers. We are also investigating options for green electricity, a greener vehicle fleet and even switching to fair-trade coffee/tea for our canteen supplies. We are also encouraging social involvement in the community for ERIKS employees which will make a real contribution simply due to the size of the organisation.
ERIKS CSR policy is already producing excellent results, as evidenced by a recent example from ERIKS in Belgium. Starting in 2009, the Benelux company collaborated with a major food producer on a unique project in India. The project involves using a patented system to convert contaminated water into drinking water, without using any form of energy. It is, therefore, entirely sustainable, and is proving to be a real life-saver in the truest sense of the word.
Finding efficiencies and reducing waste can also be accomplished in ways that are not obvious, an example of how a holistic approach has resulted in less waste and increased profit is the engineering stores reorganisation and optimisation service, Storeroom Services, offered nationally by ERIKS in the UK.
Engineering stores are notoriously difficult to maintain efficiently, or move from one place to another; often hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock is held, with many items becoming redundant before they are used. Inefficient stores can have serious implications to a company’s bottom line, with over-stocking due to a lack of information, hard to find maintenance items affecting uptime, and an undefined cost base sitting on-the-shelf. There are also basic health and safety implications to a disorganised engineering stores.
ERIKS now offers an end-to-end solution. ERIKS has the expertise and technical product knowledge to enable it to project- manage a storeroom move or transformation from initial review through to full product re-organisation and software installation. The service has saved tens of thousands of pounds for companies as wide ranging as national aerospace companies to global food manufacturers.