Logistics changes help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, improve safety and efficiency
JohnsonDiversey is committed to continuously improving our operational efficiency and profitability while reducing our impact on the environment.
Projects to reconfigure our product transportation operations in Europe and North America in 2008 drove significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, improved safety and reduced costs.
In Europe, we re-examined our product palleting and truck-loading operations. This initiative, paired with packaging improvements, enabled us to increase the number of product layers per pallet for five package types. By placing more products on each pallet, we reduced the number of forklift operations and truck transports required to ship our products. As a result, we:
- Created a safer, more efficient material-handling operation;
- Eliminated carbon dioxide emissions associated with excess truck shipments;
- Reduced the risk of transportation-related accidents;
- Saved money by reducing pallet-handling, fuel and inventory management operations.
These results benefited our customers as well, reducing the demand for floor space in their warehouses and reducing the staff time and costs associated with handling more product pallets.
The effort began in Enschede, The Netherlands, at our second largest European manufacturing plant. In a single year, we reduced carbon dioxide emissions from product transportation operations by 7.3 percent. The program's success spurred us to implement similar changes in our factories in France and Italy and in a contract manufacturing operation, where we are already forecasting additional reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.
In North America, we partnered with a third party to manage our product transportation. We worked with that team to consolidate customer orders to optimize our delivery routes and increase the efficiency of our truck-loading operations. We also implemented new policies with our product distributors to optimize deliveries. These policies addressed minimum orders and backorders and provided incentive pricing that helped drive shipping efficiencies. In two years, those efforts drove a 5.1 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions related to truck and rail shipments, even as the number of shipments increased 4.4 percent.
In addition, we have partnered with logistics operators that are part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Transport Partnership to drive additional reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.