Who or What Saves Energy? People or Technology?

Any grumpy old man sitting on a park bench will tell you that with advancements in technology, comes stupider and stupider generations of people. Wait, is it ok for me to use stupider as a word and still sound professional? I’m not sure; I’ll have to Google it to find out the answer.

As our culture becomes more reliant on technology to complete even the most basic of tasks (grammar checking, brewing coffee, parallel parking, etc.) we can often lose sight of the fact that it was us who created the technology in the first place.

In fact, we operate the technology (push the start button) and allow for it to do our stuff for us so that we can get back to more important things like Tweeting videos of cats and Instagramming our food.

In the world of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), technology is being implemented to empower the workforce to realize unprecedented results in production and efficiency. This same principle applies with energy management systems that provide manufacturers with the data needed to help increase energy efficiency.

In the attempt to achieve maximized energy efficiency, IIoT technology has bridged the gap which used to limit what the manufacturing industry could do to increase efficiency. Having accurate, real-time data on energy consumption allows for manufacturers to take action on improving problem areas to increase efficiency.

With the help of the recent advancements in IIoT energy management solutions, manufacturers have begun to reap the benefits of reducing energy waste. The most important part of that previous sentence was “with the help of”…. technology can’t save energy for your company on its own; it is the tool required to allow you reduce energy consumption. With regards to saving energy, the largest single impact is people. (I didn’t just make that up. It’s part of the European Best Practice Report).

An Energy Management Information System (EMIS) is a great tool to help reduce energy waste. It is however, as previously stated, a tool that can be used; it is not the do-all-end-all solution. EMIS are great for providing people with the data required to take positive action in improving the energy management of an operation. Thankfully, technology still needs us. We haven’t become completely obsolete… not yet anyways.

Without the energy consumption data provided by the EMIS, we would not know where to start in our quest to improve the energy efficiency of an operation. On the flip-side, without the people to carry out the action, the technology (EMIS) would provide data analytics that would go to waste (sorry, bad pun I know) as no action would be taken.

Employee buy-in is crucial to the success of an EMIS implementation or the success of the implementation of any technology. With energy management solutions, often times using real-world examples help employees understand the impact that energy waste can have on the success or failure of the operation. Employee training and recognition can play a big role in getting employees on-board with the idea of saving energy.

“Many of the things they do to reduce energy costs at the mill they can do at home. If they can relate it to their home energy usage, they’ll naturally bring that mindset to work,” says Pat Burke, Former Electrical Systems Coordinator, Flakeboard.

Having complete, company-wide buy-in is also key to the success of an energy management system. Energy management can be thought of as a production line: If there is an issue with one portion of the process, then all other portions are negatively affected and maximized results are not realized.

When energy is being actively managed by employees at all levels within the organization, then energy truly becomes a controllable item and not just a given expense.