November/December 1992
Whether your aim is operating efficiently and preventing accidents or impressing political officials and sophisticated scrap consumers, attention to plant cleanliness can help get you there.
BY JEFF BORSECNIK
Jeff Borsecnik is assistant editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
"Our mission is to be the best scrap processor in the world, and in order to do that we have to have the cleanest house." Bill Clay, vice president of operations for Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co. (Holland, Mich.), may be more adamant about plant housekeeping than many of his industry counterparts, but he's certainly not the only scrap recycling executive who believes in the importance of a clean facility.
Indeed, more and more scrap firms are putting a priority on good housekeeping—keeping all grades of scrap clearly separated and easily accessible, minimizing obstructions to efficient production, and ensuring that their facilities are good, safe places to work. As a result, these companies have reaped a wide range of benefits, from improved production rates to public relations gains.
Making Safety Easier
One of the major rewards of a clean scrap recycling facility can be a clean safety record. "You can't have good safety without good housekeeping," says Joseph Kovacich, vice president of Miller Compressing Co. (Milwaukee) and chairman of the safety committee of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) (Washington, D.C.). "How you can have a safe environment without having a clean, orderly one?"
Cleophus Lyons, a loss-control representative with CNA Insurance Cos. (Cleveland), agrees that there's a strong connection between housekeeping and safety. For one thing, he says, an unclean facility often invites accidents. "You'd be surprised at how many accidents are caused by oil on the floor," he offers, noting, "that same oil can also be a fire hazard." But appearance also says a lot about a company's attitude toward safety, he reports. "It's a mind-set of how a company looks at operations. Accidents are more likely to occur at a sloppy facility."
The link between good housekeeping and safety is a natural if for no other reason than that both require attention to details, points out William W. Lowery, vice president of Annaco Inc. (Akron, Ohio), which has achieved a record of more than 900 straight days without a lost-time injury by any of its 75 employees. This has saved the firm about $250,000 annually in workers' compensation costs and contributed to a substantial reduction in employee turnover, Lowery reports.
But while the company considers a clean facility vital to its safety program, "housekeeping is a separate goal as well," he emphasizes. "You can't relate it totally to safety—you don't have to paint a crane to make it safe. But if you pay that kind of attention to equipment, you're going to pay more attention to safety."
Smoothing Operations
Just as plant housekeeping requires attention to detail, it can produce a new awareness of detail—particularly in terms of scrap inventory. "One of the biggest assets of keeping our plant neat is that we know what we have and can find what we need," says James Snyder, president of Assad Iron & Metal Co. (Brownsville, Pa.). And better housekeeping at DBW & Associates Inc. (Anaheim, Calif.) has enabled the firm to put its computer inventory system to better use, says Stewart Shirk, the company's vice president, noting that scrap plants have lots of corners that can accumulate material. In fact, when the company undertook a thorough plant cleaning and reorganizing, "we found metal we didn't know we had—some expensive high-temp alloys," he reports.
In addition to clarifying inventory, good housekeeping certainly improves efficiency, says Ron Gostek, director of safety and environmental compliance for Keywell Corp. (Chicago). "It's easier to walk through an open warehouse of neatly ordered rows and find inventory than to climb over piles looking for tags." Good housekeeping at Keywell includes better use of space, and the firm's efforts have allowed it to consolidate operations, using only a fraction of former processing area. This consolidation has greatly improved efficiency, says Gostek, and promises to save capital costs as the firm undertakes a long-term project to modernize its plants.
Other operations improvements gained as a result of plant housekeeping can be seen at Annaco, where policy dictates that all incoming scrap must be processed within a month and stored in a prepared state. This not only allows the firm to provide material on short notice to customers, but also improves organization, saves space, and ensures prompt removal of waste, notes Lowery.
In addition, a clean operation saves on equipment wear and tear, with the quickest payback coming in the form of fewer flat tires, note many recyclers. Furthermore, says Lowery, "maintenance and operations people take better care of equipment if it's clean, if they don't get dirty when they climb on it." Annaco cleans all of its equipment on a regular schedule with a mobile power washer—nicknamed Sir Clean a Lot —that the company assembled from a stationary washer, a panel truck, and a water tank.
Kelly Nash, environmental manager of Commercial Metals Co.'s Secondary Metals Processing Division (Dallas), is another advocate of clean machinery. "Equipment works better when clean," he says. "You see problems such as small leaks more easily, and you don't get dirt in bearings and other sensitive areas." He warns, however, that "steam cleaning and washing equipment can bring another set of problems because runoff of wash water can require a wastewater discharge permit—it would not be covered a storm water discharge permit."
Easing Environmental Compliance
Still, good plant housekeeping is closely tied to good environmental management. In fact, maintaining a clean facility is "the least expensive thing you can do to comply with environmental regulations," says Nash. "Environmental inspectors are typically not very experienced in heavy industrial operations. If a facility looks dirty, they get suspicious." The downside to this connection, he points out, is that "there is no way to make a scrap plant look like a park."
When it comes to plant housekeeping for environmental compliance, the priority for Marvin Siegel, chairman of ReMA's environment committee and president of Spartan Iron & Metal Corp. (Spartanburg, S.C.), is controlling hydrocarbons—everything from oil to hydraulic fluids—which regulators watch closely. Processors must develop careful procedures to control these fluids, he warns, because oil "won't be allowed to hit the ground any more like it used to be."
One solution is avoiding scrap with free oils and other contaminants. Thus, good housekeeping begins with material acquisition and demands careful inspection of incoming materials by employees who are trained to recognize and reject problem items.
Where troublesome materials can't be avoided, recyclers should at least "reasonably consolidate material that could cause environmental problems in an area they can control," advises Jack Metzner, president of Conservit Inc. (Hagerstown, Md.). As an example, he notes that his company stores turnings and other materials that could have oil on them on a concrete pad equipped with a oil/water separation system, "preventing a lot of future problems."
In the same vein, many scrap recyclers are hard-surfacing their plants to improve facility appearance and control problems like oil as well as mud and dust. Some executives have stayed clear of concrete because it can break under heavy loads of scrap, but Snyder of Assad Iron & Metal emphasizes that occasionally replacing sections of the concrete surface onto which all of the company's scrap is unloaded is just "a cost of business." And Nash suggests that facilities concerned about concrete breaking under scrap should at least pave areas near plant entrances to limit the amount of dirt ending up on the street out front.
Winning Hearts and Minds
Of course, improved perceptions of a company is another tangible reward of good plant housekeeping. "You can tell a lot about a company by its appearance, whether it's a restaurant, marina, or salvage yard," says Grant E. Milliron, owner of Milliron Iron & Metal (Mansfield, Ohio), a firm that operates a public buyback center, an auto salvage yard, and a solid waste hauling and transfer business, in addition to processing metallic scrap.
Because the company depends on attracting the public, says Milliron, extra care goes into ensuring that its operations are clean, safe, and attractive. This keep customers coming back, he says, "and it's much easier to retain a customer than to get a new one." The company washes its equipment regularly and occasionally rents a commercial street sweeper, all employees wear uniforms, and litter is carefully collected around the perimeter of its facilities. Another area of special attention are the firm's vehicles, he says, explaining, "That truck with your name on it is a mobile billboard. If it's dirty, that's a reflection on your business."
Commercial Metals also puts extra effort into the appearance of its facilities that cater to household recyclers, screening from view more industrial scrap-handling operations, says Nash. Such efforts not only endear the company to its neighbors and retail suppliers, but also have contributed to a growing "awareness among government officials of what we do," he says, and that has paid dividends.
Others have had similar experiences. Metzner of Conservit, for example, calls good housekeeping "the key to government relations." In fact, he notes, "perceptions are probably more important than how a facility is actually run." And Miller Compressing, which has invested substantially in landscaping and regularly cleans public property adjacent to its facility, has enjoyed "tremendous response from public officials, especially those in city planning," says Kovacich. "The usual connotation of a scrap plant is `an undesirable neighbor.' If you don't take positive action, that's how you'll be thought of."
Assad Iron & Metal's careful attention to housekeeping has resulted in another benefit, says Snyder: improved peddler trade. "Years ago, we used to shudder when people would drive through the mud puddles." He figures a clean house also impresses visiting scrap buyers. "If people see the separation of material in neat piles, they will be more apt to buy. They see what's there and what they are getting." Joe Cataldo, director of operations for LMC Recyclers, a division of Simsmetal USA Corp. (Richmond, Calif.), agrees, noting that his firm's efforts at careful housekeeping prompted one buyer to say the operations looked "almost like a supermarket."
But a well-kept facility is most appreciated by those who spend the most time there—employees—say scrap recycling executives. A cleaner plant can mean less turnover, improved maintenance and safety, and more employee pride in job performance and the company. "We don't keep the plant in the condition that it's in for our customers or guests," says Miller Compressing's Kovacich. "We keep it in the condition it's in for us."
Housekeeping How-Tos
Those who've benefitted from good plant housekeeping say the key to improving order and cleanliness is commitment by senior managers. If employees know that senior executives are personally keeping an eye on housekeeping, "It will get special attention," says Padnos's Clay. "Top management has to be involved or it won't work."
Lowery of Annaco recommends beginning a program to improve housekeeping by determining what needs to be done, setting priorities, and instituting two or three projects at a time. Twice a year, the company sets goals—of which housekeeping tasks are a part—for each department for the next six months. This sort of scheduling "really is the key to completing long-term projects like painting," says Lowery. With concrete goals established, workers in each department know what needs to be done and their progress can be monitored at regular meetings. (For an example of housekeeping performance monitoring, see "Measuring Quality in Housekeeping" on page XX.)
Divvying up responsibilities to individuals also helps make sure things get done, Lowery says. Employees might be assigned a particular area to keep clean and orderly or specific jobs to do to if their equipment goes down for maintenance and they are not involved in the repairs.
Once an operation has undergone an initial thorough cleaning, the process is "self-sustaining," says Keywell's Gostek. "If an area is already dirty, and you tell employees not to spill oil, they will figure it doesn't really matter. But if you clean it first and then say `Keep it the way it is,' everyone becomes his own judge and manager. Employees can see for themselves if they are handling things in the correct fashion or causing leaks."
Enabling employees to perform their assigned housekeeping duties by providing appropriate equipment and time is especially vital in achieving housekeeping goals, says Gostek. If this is overlooked, housekeeping may always fall to the bottom of the to-do list.
Some recycling executives also believe that incentives designed to encourage employees to improve their housekeeping habits can work. These incentives can range from simply reminding them of the health and safety benefits of a well-kept operation—and the relative ease in working in one—to recognition at company meetings to bonuses. Cataldo at LMC, for example, has handed out McDonalds gift certificates to any employee who picked up stray litter or scrap. Keywell uses information from monthly safety inspections that cover housekeeping to help determine annual bonuses. Padnos encourages its drivers to avoid flat tires with a regular tire-incentive payment. And Annaco awards departments with good housekeeping performance "mad money" to use as they wish.
How Clean is Clean?
Good houskeeping clearly can contribute to a company's well-being in many ways. But even housekeeping enthusiasts agree that maintaining a clean plant has its price—in the form of new equipment, management time, and labor. Annaco's Lowery, for example estimates that 10 to 15 percent of his firm's labor goes into houskeeping, though he's quick to add that the effort reduces costs in the rest of its operations. For scrap recycling executives, who must weigh the costs and benefits of houskeeping like any other business expense, the question remains: "How clean is clean enough?"
To Clay of Padnos, the answer is clearly subjective. "It's all in the eyes of the beholder. In my case, we're never clean enough. As good as we are, we could be 20-percent better—and I think it would pay off; I think the savings are there.
Others think a more objective answer may be found in a plant's environmental health. "Clean enough" to Nash of Commercial Metals, for instance, means "the air should be clean, the water should be clean—not oily or muddy—and the pavement or ground should be clean, except for minimal dirt, as should the scrap."
To Proler's Caputo, clean is practical. "We're not in an industry that manufactures cosmetics in dust-free rooms; we handle scrap and attempt to recycle. But you can agree there are certain standards you must strive to meet: no evidence of spills; materials stored in a neat and orderly manner; easy access to and from facility for suppliers and those that pick up; and a clear right-of-way for fire trucks." Shirk of DBW & Associates puts it simply, "It's just metal off the ground and each commodity in its place."
But others like a bit more polish. "A processing facility should be a joy to look at," says Keywell's Gostek. "It shouldn't look like a dump. It should look like any other production process where everything is lined up and ready to go. And the machinery looks like it did the day you bought it."
Basic Housekeeping
What exactly is good housekeeping? Opinions vary, but most scrap recycling executives would agree that it includes the following checklist of basics:
- Keep aisles, walkways, and doorways free of obstructions.
- Avoid ground contact with oil or hydraulic fluid and remove any such spills or stains on the ground or equipment.
- Make certain that tools are kept clean and put away after use.
- Clean roads, parking lots, and operations areas of metal and debris. For this job, many use a street sweeper.
- Remove any waste buildup in operations areas and around the perimeter of the facility.
- Don't leave oily rags or gloves laying around.
- Keep buildings, equipment, and vehicles clean, painted, and well-maintained. In particular, make sure that operator compartment windows are clean and unobscured.
- Separate scrap piles carefully and clean unloading pads between loads.
- Appropriately light work areas and change burned-out bulbs. —J.B.
Measuring Quality in Housekeeping
For most scrap recycling operations, measuring good housekeeping is simply looking around, but Louis Padnos Iron & Metal has a more formal and objective way of looking at housekeeping. The company's internal quality-control program—called P1 and similar to Ford Motor Co.'s Q1 quality-rating scheme—is based on semiannual department audits, which award scores of 1 to 10 in various categories, including housekeeping, as well as safety, teamwork, written procedures, and customer service.
Under the housekeeping category, 0, 1, or 2 points are awarded for keeping tools and machinery clean and orderly, aisles and steps clean and open, bathrooms and break rooms neat, driveways clear, work areas well-organized, and so forth. Since the program began in January, 9 of 18 plants or subgroups have been audited, reports Bill Clay. But, to date, none has received a perfect score—which would have won the group the honor of displaying a large flag marked with a "P1." —J.B.
Whether your aim is operating efficiently and preventing accidents or impressing political officials and sophisticated scrap consumers, attention to plant cleanliness can help get you there.