Whirlpool: Sustainability from factory to home

Achieving long-term goals
Whirlpool Corporation is using data and expert support to drive and achieve its sustainability strategy.
“The ability to boil everything down to numbers enables us to communicate back to executive staff on how we are making progress — what gets measured, gets done.”

— Ron Voglewede
Global Sustainability Director, Whirlpool Corporation

Challenge

• Whirlpool needed to design an actionable strategy and implement it across 40 different manufacturing sites around the world, including China, Mexico and the U.S.

• One of Whirlpool Corporation’s significant sustainability targets is zero waste to landfill from its production facilities worldwide — by 2020.

• This posed a significant challenge for the company’s small sustainability team.

• “It was easy to create a big goal, but we had to figure out how to measure it,” says Voglewede.

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Solution

Sustainability and Efficiency with EcoStruxure
Apps, Analytics & Services : EcoStruxure™ Resource Advisor

• Schneider Electric’s sustainability team worked with Whirlpool to define the scope of resource data to be collected and to help ensure consistency in project deployment.

• Whirlpool adopted Schneider’s energy and sustainability management platform, EcoStruxure Resource Advisor, to monitor and track data across the company’s facilities worldwide.

• With support from Schneider experts, data collection is now consistent and accurate, and Whirlpool Corporation’s staff is trained on EcoStruxure Resource Advisor.

• Schneider continues to help the company through close cooperation and collaboration — essential as Whirlpool Corporation’s sustainability team looks to expand initiatives such as the use of onsite renewable energy at manufacturing plants.

• “The team takes their time to help us ask the right questions to get relevant answers,” Voglewede says. “They are here to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and provide any kind of support. Over the last five years it’s been a great relationship and one we are obviously excited to continue.”

Results

• Three plants in Brazil have already achieved their zero waste-to-landfill goal, two years earlier than expected, and more sites are making significant gains.

• Whirlpool has been able to identify and implement improvements across its facilities; just by understanding that it had over 20 million pounds of cardboard waste in its Ohio plants alone, the company anticipates saving more than $1 million over the next three years.

• With EcoStruxure Resource Advisor, the Whirlpool sustainability team has the information it needs to boost efficiency and drive value:
    - Local data provided in customized dashboards for each site, as well as portfolio-wide analytics
    - Managed data streams include electricity, water and waste
    - Data easily accessible via a web-based interface