E-Bikes Take Off In Europe
By Claus Schafhalter | June 30, 2010
It is no secret that many cities in Europe are bike-friendly, with dedicated bike lanes, paths solely for use by bicyclists, and generally a higher acceptance of bicycle in general traffic.
Still, if you are a person of the more lazy kind, the idea to work out just to get to work or do your shopping, might not be that appealing to you.
Bring on the E-Bike, a (usually) two-wheeler powered by a small electric motor (and still by your muscles in many cases).
Stuttgart, Germany, known as the city where the Mercedes cars come from, will have a meet of 500 e-bikers on July 4th. This seems to be the biggest e-biker event so far. In Austria, the state of Upper Austria has a successful program to spread e-bikes to its citizens. Applicants can get a small subsidy from the state and enjoy their effortless movements.
Many holiday regions offer e-bikes for rent to discover scenic routes. I remember years ago when my family did a vacation bicycling from Passau to Vienna along the river of Danube. Although the route follows the river downwards all the time, there are many hills and side-trips where the help of an electric motor would have been very welcome. So why not try it out on you next vacation?
Sure, the e-bike will not solve our carbon addiction and use of fossil fuels for most of our transportation needs, but it is a small step into the right direction and has the ability to make m0re people comfortable with electric propulsion.
Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos
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Low Sustainability Ratings For Oil And Gas Corporations
By Claus Schafhalter | June 24, 2010
An Oekom Study looking at 27 leading oil and gas corporations rates organizations regarding their sustainability. The study’s authors granted that corporations try to do the right things, however overall their activities are not focused enough and lack tangible results.
On a scale from A+ to D-, the small Austrian company OMV ranked first with a “B”, followed by Snam Rete (Italy) and Total (France). Norway’s Statoil is rated only “C”.
What about the company behind the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? BP is also rated “C”, and the authors of the study stated problems with save operation of assets and higher than normal risk for workers to get injured.
While the Deepwater Horizon — the oil rig that exploded and sunk killing 11 people — was owned and operated by Transocean, BP is said to had a major role in making decisions that lead to the tragedy and the catastrophic oil spill that followed. Maybe a “D” would have been in order for BP?
Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos
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Lean Means Sustainability — Step 4 — Improve
By Claus Schafhalter | June 21, 2010
In earlier posts I wrote about “Define”, “Measure” and “Analyze” as part of Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. The example I used in these previous posts showed that our office is not energy efficient, and we also analyzed where and why. Remember, the most important results of the Analysis phase are well determined problem causes.
Within the Improve phase, creativity techniques are used to find and evaluate ideas to address the problems. Let’s assume one of the issues we want to tackle is the waste of energy due to offices that are heated or cooled, even when they are not occupied. Ideas to improve might be installation of occupancy sensors (motion sensors) that turn off heating or A/C when no one is there. Or maybe a connection to the light switch — no light, then no heating or cooling. A different approach could be to control temperature based on daytime, weekend and holidays. And there maybe many more ways to reduce energy (more efficient heating / cooling system, better insulation, etc.).
Once we have collected ideas, we need to evaluate these ideas against benefits, cost, risk, time to implement, and other criteria suitable for our situation. We select the best improvement ideas, and — using plain old project management tools — implement the improvements.
Some advice: Especially if your organization is new to structured improvement processes, it is better to concentrate on solutions that can be implemented fast using small (or no) investment money. These solutions should show positive results very soon, and therefore motivate employees to go along, prepare for future changes, and convince management that the solutions are worth while.
Lean Six Sigma improvements should be seen as part of a targeted continuous improvement process, and the really successful organizations are in for the long haul. They set an overall goal, and break this goal down into smaller targets to be accomplished along the way.
But how do we know if our improvement efforts are successful? Lean Six Sigma has the answer in Step 5 — Control, which I will describe in a following post.
Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos
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Green Homes Sell!
By Claus Schafhalter | June 7, 2010
Many builders attending the National Green Building Conference stated that they have been able to sell sustainably built homes considerably faster than the traditionally built new homes that have been languishing in today’s tough market. Especially energy efficiency remains the feature most important to consumers interested in green buildings.
Good news is also that the price gap between green and standard housing is closing, helped along by tax and other incentives.
One of the problems builders have is to get the green features appraised correctly. If appraisers do not factor in the value of green features, the loan a potential buyer can get will be lower and maybe not sufficient to buy the house. And this in spite the savings in monthly expenditures, which means that borrowers are able to pay somewhat higher mortgage payments instead of spending the money on higher utility bills.
Does building green pay off? Research is still in its infancy, but there are numbers cited that each Dollar in annual energy savings adds $20 to the value of a house.
If this holds true, then we have another example where doing the right thing for our environment is also the right thing for our pocket books.
Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos
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You Can’t Control What You Can’t Measure
By Claus Schafhalter | May 14, 2010
I am still concerned about what’s going on with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Previous estimates were that 800,000l oil spill into the sea every day. Some scientists come to the conclusion that it is more likely to be 10 times more! It seems to be consensus that right now nobody knows exactly how much oils streams into the Gulf.
This is what BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles had to say:
“This data is not easy to capture,” Suttles said. “We actually have to assign some of our technicians to gather that data.”
Yes, clearly someone has to look at this. Does it matter how much oil is leaked?
Well, you can’t control what you can’t measure. This begs the following question: If BP cannot measure the spill, how do they think they will be able to stop the spill?
Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos
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