Sustainable Industry to Protect the Environment
We want our foundry to be as clean as possible; we hold the firm conviction that sustainable industry is a key component in securing the future of our company. Our employees perform their jobs meticulously and with a constant eye to environmental consciousness, and our technology is state-of-the-art. We firmly believe that this contributes to positive improvements in both service and final quality.
As a founding member of the Umweltinitiative der Wirtschaft im Kreis Gütersloh (Environmental Initiative of Industries in County Gütersloh), environmental consciousness is an integral part of company policy at BRECHMANN-GUSS.
Waste management is only one of several approaches we take. Our goal is to maintain a multi-faceted perspective towards environmental protection and to ensure that our concern for the environment is seamlessly integrated into our day-to-day operations. To that end, every level and every functional chain in our business has concrete goals regarding environmental protection. Reaching those goals is a continuous process, in which responsibility is shared by every level of the organization. One of our goals is transparency and monitoring of waste production; to this end, we conduct regular inspections according to the standards set by the Umweltinitiative (Environmental Initiative) to register the amount and type of waste materials produced.
Since 2011, we have been documenting our efforts to conserve resources according to the German Industrial Standard (DIN-Norm) 50001:2011. BRECHMANN-GUSS has committed itself to both maintaining and systematically improving our energy-management system; we are also committed to achieving our energy-related strategic and operational goals. Amongst others, these include: internal transparency with regard to energy use throughout the company; sinking of specific energy costs and related operational expenses; efficient and conservative use of both energy and other natural resources; and decreasing our carbon footprint. As an energy-efficient enterprise, BRECHMANN-GUSS is setting an example in the industrial community. We document and strive to optimize our energy use for all of our procedures; we provide the necessary resources to fulfil the goals we have set; and our energy-consciousness begins at the start of our production chain in purchasing. Internal audits are used to both review and to improve compliance with our energy policies and the strategies behind them.
In addition to our strategic energy policies, our goal-oriented use of Computer-Based Simulation of the casting process plays an important role in environmental conservation. In the past, process development and prototype testing required the sequential production of (usually multiple) “throwaway” castings in a wasteful trial-and-error process. These prototype castings were then simply discarded after mistakes and/or optimization potential had been identified. Today, these iterative intermediate stages are simulated using advanced computer software. Only after the simulations show satisfactory results does production begin: leftover raw material is melted, a mould is produced, and a real casting is created.
Our process monitoring and quality control measures offer another way to foster the cause of environmental protection. All of our procedures are designed to minimize possible waste production and scrap. Measures to identify possible causes of waste and to minimize the use of resources start with monitoring the sand used in the moulds for optimum mould strength and sand cohesion, to avoid producing unusable moulds and generating waste before casting even begins. They also include ensuring the proper composition of alloys, maintaining the correct casting temperatures and minimum cooling time in the moulds, and monitoring each series as it is produced with an eye to previously determined number of mouldings, to ensure that parts possess the correct dimensions and to avoid producing unacceptable castings.
