Small car maker, but big energy saver

Vinay Varshney, as he predicts the end of CFL lamps in a few years, points to the ceiling of the conference room at Maruti Suzuki's factory in Gurgaon. It is then that we notice that the two holders, right above the two ends of the long table, have slots for three lamps, but only two are glowing.

There is no malfunction, explains the company's chief general manager heading environment. The factory managers realised that the room would have enough illumination with two lamps of 36 watts in each holder. So the third lamps were taken out.

This captures the philosophy of Maruti, whose parent Suzuki Motor of Japan has a reputation for making small cars, selling them at a small price, and still making money by doing the small things well.

When O Suzuki, chairman of Suzuki, speaks about improvements, his hands move as if he is trying to compress the air. What he speaks translates into: Smaller, fewer, lighter, shorter, neater.

"Constantly, he seeks to bring components closer to the assembly line, and people in offices closer to one another, even though no money is being saved because you already own the entire space," says Varshney.

Applying the same principles to its environment and sustainability drive, Maruti has reduced its electricity consumption per vehicle by 20 percent in the last nine years, water consumption by 46 percent, and land fill waste by 67 percent. The carbon dioxide emission has declined 27 percent in seven years. It has become a zero discharge company and recycles all its water.

The initial drive came from the parent company, which gets tax benefits in Japan for environment-friendly methods and aspires to dominate the European market, which is fanatical about the environment. It may not cut much ice in India, but it is a big deal in Europe that A-Star, Suzuki's new global car, is the first one out of India to meet the end of life vehicle norms of Europe.

"At the time of scrapping, 87 percent of A-Star can be recycled. The rest can be put in incinerators and used in another form," says C V Raman, chief general manager, research and development.

While the making of A-Star is a case study, Maruti has made the big gains in conserving energy and water and eliminating waste through small, incremental steps. The company leaves the spanner to the shop floor and prefers the scalpel to chip away at waste. At the heart of the drive is Value-Analysis-Value-Engineering, under which the company analyses all components, systems, sub-systems and processes and asks itself whether the same things can be done with less resources without affecting functionality. As an example of this, Maruti last year embarked on a programme to reduce the weight of each component by 1 gram. Similarly, in the assembly line, the point where axles are installed, the components are placed on an inclined bar on which they slide towards the man doing the installation due to gravity. This does away with a conveyor belt.

"I never use the light above my desk; I do not need it because I get enough light from other sources," says a senior executive of the company, who does not want to be named. His desk, as of the others, has a light hanging low over it, so that the least amount of light is frittered away. There is no light in the passages.

Years ago, when the Indian market offered only two tube light configurations, 42 watts and 36 watts, Maruti tied up with a small manufacturer for 28-watt tubes. It caused a slight, non-noticeable reduction in light, but the small energy saving multiplied by the thousands of lights was so big that the additional cost of the new lights was recovered in a year.

The water pumps in cooling towers were made to consume less electricity by slightly reducing the size of the impeller, a moving component. The power supply to machines that run intermittently -- air compressors, for example -- is cut off when they are idle.

The compressed air used to run various tools used to go into the shop floor at 28-29 degrees centigrade. It was discovered that there would be no harm done if the temperature of this air was allowed to rise to 32 degrees. So cooling tower fans were made to run a little less.

"Energy saving is about small drops that combine to make a big pool of saving," says Varshney.

Earlier, the wastewater -- the dirty water from the paint shop, the toilet sewage -- after being treated, was dumped into government-owned sewers, for which the company paid the government.

After improving the treatment process, this sewage is no longer discharged into government sewers. Instead, it goes into various processes in the factory. However, it had to be first exhibited to the workers that the recycled water was clean.

Earlier, all components came in corrugated boards and wooden packaging. Gradually, the company moved to reusable steel crates for components from Japan. Once emptied, they are folded and sent back.

The components supplied by Indian vendors come in plastic bins. Apart from being reusable, they allow more automation since they can be put on steel trolleys and straight on the line.

Considering that the company every day deals with thousands of parts, the eventual reduction in waste is huge.

While much of these processes will be invisible to the general public, the environment-friendly vehicles the company will roll out will be there for all to see.

Having launched vehicles running on liquefied petroleum gas in 2005, Maruti has moved to compressed natural gas. The roadmap shows hybrid electric vehicles, and a fully electric vehicle in 10 years.

Environment friendliness, says Raman, has become part of the hygiene for the company's employees. That is amply evident in the canteen at the Gurgaon factory, which has signs saying that anyone who wastes food is a "criminal".