Few companies can make a stronger claim to green manufacturing than Harbec Inc., a maker of machine tools and injection-molded plastic parts in upstate New York. The company runs a wind-energy turbine on-site, captures waste heat from a cogeneration plant, collects rainwater, maintains highly energy efficient buildings and recycles its scrap plastic. Last year, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology gave it an award for excellence in sustainable manufacturing.
Now Harbec wants to do a better job of proving its green bona fides by automating the way it tracks, manages and reports carbon use. Harbec will soon deploy Carbon Connect, a new carbon accounting application from Epicor, its ERP vendor.
Harbec is seeking certification under ISO 50001, the energy-management standard of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and needs to improve its data management to get there. Company officials expect the software and the intensive audit that was required to set it up will provide the baseline data that is needed for ISO certification. That in turn will help it reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2013, which means its energy use won’t add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
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