Wright Line Adds Green Chemistry to Manufacturing Process
Wright Line, a manufacturer of products and solutions for technology-intensive environments, recently implemented a new, green cleaning process for its powder coating paint line.
The green chemistry cleaning process consists of using chemicals and chemical processes designed to reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts. Unlike conventional steel cleaning treatments, this new green technology is free of hazardous metals such as phosphate, which has been proven to have a negative impact on local waterbodies.
Wright Line, using Chemetall, US' Gardoclean®, proactively made the move to this environmentally safe product and completed the implementation well ahead of schedule.
The company estimates that the new practice will save tens of thousands of dollars annually in lower chemical costs and will realize a return on investment within a few weeks. In addition, by eliminating an annual preventative maintenance process required by legacy materials, the new solution will increase operating uptime. The former preventative maintenance process disrupted production and resulted in multiple days of costly production downtime every year.
"Many companies hesitate to incorporate green practices for fear of incurring huge upfront costs or decreased reliability", stated Ed Bednarcik, chief executive officer. "However, in our case, the minimum upfront investment to implement this sustainable practice delivered not only a process performance benefit, but did it at a lower overall cost while simultaneously increasing production availability."
"Replacing our phosphate cleaning process with this new Gardoclean® solution is a win-win situation," stated Dave Pierce, manager of Manufacturing Engineering Wright Line, a designer and manufacturer of consoles, enclosures, office and other specialty workspace solutions for technology-intensive environments, has been serving the data center, government office, call center, analytical and electronic laboratory and high-tech manufacturing environments for 75 years.