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Andreas Dummler, Director of Information Systems, ARBURG GmbH + Co KG

By Andreas Dümmler

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of injection molding machines used to make plastic products, ARBURG GmbH + Co KG is essentially a manufacturer’s manufacturer. We are as committed to smarter manufacturing processes in our own plants as our clients.

One of our foremost priorities is energy efficiency. As a family-owned business, environmental responsibility is a significant part of our culture. We make use of necessary resources, but stay true to a guiding principle to use the most energy efficient production and management systems in our plants as possible. Key tactics in facility engineering and management include the use of geothermal energy, photovoltaic technology, combined heat and power plants, rain water, waste heat from production equipment, and the use of natural ventilation and extraction in our buildings.

ARBURG’s injection molding machines are used by a range of customers in the automotive, electronics, packaging, medical equipment and consumer goods sectors in some 100 countries around the globe. We build all of our products to operate in an energy efficient manner and optimize the energy consumption at our clients’ plants.

For example, writing implement manufacturer Lamy, saves several thousand Euros annually by using electric ARBURG machines in its manufacturing process. At the same time, the company, a market-leader inGermany that also enjoys a strong market position inWestern Europe, is able to shorten production cycles and get its pens and other products to market faster.

Since 2008 ARBURG has presented the annual ARBURG Energy Efficiency Award to a company that excels in its corporate philosophy and activities in the field of energy efficiency. It is important that the winner, like us, takes an innovative, holistic and global approach to the topic of energy efficiency.

This year the award went to Continental, one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers. The company has targeted a 15 percent reduction in CO2 emissions and energy consumption in its production facilities by 2015. To reach this target, electric ARBURG machines are used in the injection molding area.

Given this focus, it only stands to reason that when it came time to upgrade ARBURG’s IT environment to better meet the goals of the business, energy efficiency was one of our primary considerations. This does not stem from altruism. It’s primarily sound business. Consider that of the more than 300 global businesses recently surveyed by IBM and IDC, only 21 percent were operating highly efficient data centers; those companies, however, were able to spend 50 percent more on business innovation and growth.

ARBURG chose to build its updated IT environment on the IBM zEnterprise mainframe for its ability to improve energy efficiency while accelerating time-to-market for our products without compromising on quality.

With IBM zEnterprise, ARBURG is able to make better use of the large amounts of data generated daily across our core business areas of development, procurement, production, sales and services. By migrating to zEnterprise, we have reduced our energy consumption by 80 percent and cut power consumption for disk storage by 25 percent.

ARBURG’s IT environment is part of our larger, long-term energy efficiency approach, which extends from our own production systems and buildings to the efficiency goals of our clients. In addition to the importance of environmental stewardship, we have long realized that there are significant savings to be gained from reducing company-wide energy consumption. This has been a key consideration in all of our investments for decades and remains true today as we move to a new IT environment.

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