Like all manufacturing companies, flooring manufacturer Mohawk Industries, Inc.’s operational processes create waste streams. Waste costs money. Any item sent to a landfill costs the company; any item that can be recycled, repurposed, or up-cycled earns or saves the company money. With that in mind, Mohawk set out to eliminate manufacturing waste sent to landfills and initiated a training and employee engagement program designed to redirect waste streams into more profitable outlets.
Program Details
A pilot program was developed at one of the company’s rug manufacturing plants in north Georgia. Rather than sending engineers to examine the facility’s waste stream and define possible solutions, the company tapped into the good ideas of the men and women on the plant floor, realizing that their knowledge of the processes and equipment at the facility would provide first-hand insight.
In each department, a facilitator with a background in sustainability worked with groups of employees, spreading a tarp on the plant floor and placing items from the department’s waste stream atop it and asking for their suggestions on how the material could be redirected. Creative solutions included working with vendors to pick up packaging material and reuse it at their facilities and sending unusable yarn waste to other company facilities where it could be repurposed into non-woven carpet pads.
Once this process had been replicated at all departments in the facility, the individuals who had found the most creative solutions were invited to join the facilitator at another plant, where the process was repeated with the individuals as trainers who helped the new employees work through the process. Employees from the second plant then were given a chance to assist at the next facility.
This variation on the train-the-trainer concept allowed individuals at the facility to take a direct role in driving positive change. As a result of their engagement in the process, they took on ownership roles that have been an essential component of sustaining the program at facilities. They act as trainers for new employees to ensure that compliance with the waste elimination initiatives is consistent across the facility.
Results
Since its inception in 2013, the program has been replicated across 19 facilities within Mohawk’s U.S. operations, with each successive implementation gaining greater success as best practices from similar facilities inform the process. (Newly identified best practices are communicated to facilities where the program is in effect, and when the best practice yields greater savings or makes the recycling process more efficient, then it is implemented in place of the old process.)
In the first three quarters of 2014, recycling programs across the enterprise generated substantial savings, with the Zero Manufacturing Waste to Landfill project contributing significantly to that total. Most of this savings was generated by reducing the amount of material used in manufacturing processes and reducing landfill fees with revenues generated through the sale of material to recyclers.
The program is being rolled out to the remainder of North American operations and will be implemented in Europe and Russia.
