From Theory to Practice: How to Lead Data-Driven Sustainability for Operational Efficiency

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I am the CEO of the Industry 4.0 Club. I have over 40 years of manufacturing and leadership experience, most of that with Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host, Mike Yost. Mike, would you please introduce yourself?

Sure. Thank you, Mike. Welcome, everybody. As Mike said, my name is Mike Yost. I'm the volunteer chairman of the Industry 4.0 Club, one of the co-founders of the club itself, and Mike's co-host on these events. I've been in industry for about 35 years, the last 15 on the industrial nonprofit side, and very excited to move forward, have the conversations today. And welcome to today's show, Gurpreet Singh, who is the Director of Global Utilities Sustainability and Innovation at Colgate-Palmolive. Gurpreet will be at the 2nd annual Manufacturing X.O Midwest event in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, on September 17th, and the title of his presentation is From Theory to Practice: How to Lead Data-Driven Sustainability for Operational Efficiency. So by way of background, Gurpreet has 27 years of experience in project management and plant utilities and maintenance, as well as handling sustainability initiatives for energy and utilities. He's directly involved in the execution and delivery of global utilities and sustainability projects. And he serves as a subject matter expert for Colgate-Palmolive for utilities and building infrastructure for global initiatives. He's also a key player in energy efficiency initiatives as they relate to the net-zero goal for the company's vision and strategy. So welcome, Gurpreet.

Thank you.

So before we get into our questions, I just want to talk for a second, Lee, about the MXO Midwest event. It's really exciting. It's become the go-to gathering for manufacturers in the region to connect, collaborate, and learn from real-world examples of successful digital transformation shared straight from the horse's— or if you will, the manufacturer's mouth. Beginning in 2024, the event has empowered local manufacturers to advance their careers and businesses through valuable knowledge exchange and impactful networking opportunities. So, and always excited to meet you at the event, Gurpreet. So let's start perhaps our questions. I wanted to kind of understand, you've worked in sustainability for quite some time now. What's it like today versus, let's say, 20 years ago when we talk about sustainability? What's changed?

You know, this is a very interesting thing. This word has changed different meanings and understanding for people for the last 20 years. And then I would say since last 5 years to a great deal. People have different understanding of sustainability related to their businesses and what they are doing, but actually what is sustainability is that how you can really utilize rather than depending on utilizing hydrocarbons or the element from the ground and carbon emissions and all that, how you can get your business sustainable. That means you use less energy, you're more efficient in how you're producing your Uh, your— what you're— whatever you are producing, well, how's the efficiency measured in that? How you're operating your machines and all that stuff. So in the last 5 years, I think the emphasis has gone pretty big on sustainability is because we are all having— every nation is creating their sustainability goal. And when you have the nations created, it percolates down to the industries as well. Uh, in the 5 years, we have seen people Now here's a bandwagon. I'll call it a bandwagon. And the reason I call it a bandwagon is people every time pick up a slogan word and just rush to it without understanding what is the actual meaning of the word.

Yeah.

And this is what has happened to sustainability, unfortunately. And now slowly, when the world is looking towards this, this initiative of carbon reduction, water reduction, energy saving, then the meaning is becoming big and more profound for everybody to really digest it, that what really they have to do to do it. For industry, again, when you say Industry 2.0, this is exactly what it is.

Yes. Now, that's a great comment. You know, I'm thinking back to my career at Michelin. And I know when we first got into it in manufacturing, we were focused almost solely, not solely, but almost solely on Reducing landfill waste and recycling. Okay, that was the big deal. How could we recycle? And as you just said, now today it's much more comprehensive than that. It's saving water, it's saving energy, it's, um, uh, all, you know, coming up with, um, non-carbon approaches to energy. It's all kinds of things. It's very different today than it was. A couple decades ago.

Yeah, I'm wondering, Gurpreet, if you could talk for a bit from your experience, if there are foundational principles that apply for a company that's looking to make real progress to meet sustainability goals.

It does. So, and this is— I'm facing, not even talking to other industries, not just in my work area, we are talking to other big, uh, CPGs and others, uh, and the common thing which I found out with the people are that in this rush of attaining sustainability and getting sustainability projects, the first thing first, many people have lost or missed the opportunities actually building it in their foundation. Well, they are learning it a bit late. Uh, when I say in foundation means whenever you have to buy, and I always go back to, you know, an example of a car, and not naming any car. You want to go and buy a car, you have 2, 3 options. You can buy the base model, which will do your job, but it does not have any heated seats, any heated steering wheels, air conditioning. And then you pay more, then you have to go to the next level, next level, and then there's a top brand. We don't want to buy top brands because, hey, let's get the capital project done quickly, cheaply, whatever, just solve that purpose. So we buy the basic car. Now what happens? After sometimes in the summer, oh, I need an air conditioner. Oh, guess what? My car is not built to adjust an air conditioner. How I to put it? Oh, it's so cold, I need to have a heated steering and heating seats. Well, guess what? It doesn't. So the foundation was the car we bought was so cheap, and now we want to have all the frills. Same thing with the projects and industries. We don't build sustainability when we are envisioning the project. We don't build sustainability that how In 10 years, if we have to go to the next level, what can be done? And the biggest problem is people look at short-term insight of how to save money now, but when they have to really go, they have to spend way more than that. They can do a project cheaply with no sub-metering, nothing, and it only costs $5,000 to a sub-metering project. But when you just don't do it and you have to do it 5 years later, it costs you $50,000. And now guess what? I can't do it, man. I can't stop my production. That's the problem with sustainability.

It's a great point in the—

about painting the vision.

So understanding sort of the value, what it means, defining it upfront where, you know, your North Star, what you're pointing toward. Because I know my work has been primarily in the manufacturing operations side itself. So not in the product design side, material side, things like that, but more in the operations. And when we talk about sustainability and we talk about making things efficiently, making them cost-effectively, reducing waste, you know, the general response is, well, that's how we operate, right? Like, that's our goal every day is to make things efficiently. So it does tie into that higher-level goal.

I think there's one problem which I've seen in the industry is that different in, in a single— if you are from manufacturing plant, Mike, and you saw, you see that in your manufacturing plant you have different departments. You have a production department, then you have a utility department, then you have accounting and everybody. And everybody is normally focused on production because that's your money-making thing, right? You sell, you manufacture a project and a product and you want to sell it out. So everybody's after, oh, let's get the manufacturing lines to the best line. But what people do not understand is that to do that, you have a whole infrastructure in your plant which is consuming 45% of your energy, that being utilities. In a big manufacturing plant, you have boilers, compressors, chillers, substations. And we don't look at the biggest bang for the buck, which is a 45% power concentrated in one area, whereas when you're talking about production line, it's just one line, two line, three line, four line. Everybody's so concentrated on the lines that they ignore the biggest energy consumer, what they have to work with. And now they are learning. And guess what?

It—

now it is financially a burden because they say, oh, I have to change my boiler. Let's keep it running because it is running inefficiently, but at least it can run. And that's where the problem— You have to understand what are your core users of energy, where you have to really work on and the results are there available quickly. So that's that insight into the system. You need to step back and look at the whole industry or whole manufacturing plant rather than looking in one department. So this is a broader— this word sustainability and energy efficiency needs to be embraced by from top management till the mechanics in the plant. If it does not, we miss the link.

Yeah, that's funny you mentioned that. I was thinking about your comments maybe reflect on Again, this changing evolution and how you gotta think about things differently. We would typically go for a shutdown and not worry about turning things off.

Exactly.

But you know, when we really got to work on it and started addressing, let's say, air leaks, you know, we could actually shut down a compressor, which is a huge cost savings for the plant in terms of dollars, just direct dollars. So there's a lot of things to think about, even the electricity usage for a week that we— because we weren't running the equipment, but we had the lights on and we had the machines idling. Now, that's tremendous when you think about it a bit more intentionally. I think that's what you're describing.

So, Mike, I'll just take one step. You just brought a very good point. You take a shutdown to shut down your production machines to do the repairs. But unfortunately, normally you don't shut down your utilities. Your compressor is still running, your boiler is still running. You cannot shut down boiler even if it's weekends. The boiler needs to run even if it's not producing steam. Guess what? It is still consuming energy, right? So the problem is that inside into that, what is the real meaning of shutdown? And, and this is a very simple problem. When we don't do proper maintenance— we all from industry— maintenance not done properly always results in higher energy consumption because it reduces every Efficiency and unnecessary breakdowns. We just concentrate to one side, which we think is money-making thing, and we ignore the people who are support in the support role, which is the utilities. And and that is where the big thing is. And now people are waking up, and I'm glad to talk to people when I see oh we are now trying to do it. I'm say I'm really happy to see that. The other problem is most of the time we don't even have any monitoring on what we are consuming. It's like you want to do a diet, and you don't even know how many bread pieces you are eating, and you go to doctor. I want to do the dieting, he says, how many bread you're eating? And I don't know, so how can I tell you? It's the same thing with energy. If you don't monitor it, how you're going to control it?

Yeah, it's a great point. I just want to remind everybody that, that we are speaking now to Gurpreet Singh of Colgate-Palmolive, talking about leading data-driven sustainability for operational efficiency. And I guess to that last point you just brought up, Gurpreet, Talking about sensors, talking about monitoring operations and such, how has Industry 4.0 and the technologies in those fields, monitoring and sensors and such, have they improved a company's ability to be able to address these issues, monitor these points, and do a better job with sustainability?

Yes. And when you talk about foundation, exactly this is foundation. If I don't know what I'm consuming, I cannot control it. You need to know it to control it. That's a simple mantra for any energy efficiency or any project. If I'm not knowing what I'm consuming to produce this, how I'm going to make some efforts to bring that value down? And submetering is one of the things which has been ignored for a very long time with the people because that for them was not paying them anything. It's just fancy numbers to see on the screen. But now those fancy numbers are actually helping them to achieve their goals. Without that, they don't do it. And yes, there are sensors and everything. Now there's another, you know, anytime when we burn fire, it does 2 things. It can give us cooked food or it can burn our house. It Everything has pros and cons, right? So the pros and cons is that if you don't do anything without knowledge of it, you are not going to reach your target. Same thing with this sub-metering. Sub-metering can give you truckload of data, but if you don't know how you are— which data is actually required and which data you really want to process to achieve your things, then it makes no sense. And then people say, I spent so much money, I have so much, but you know what, the results are not coming. Analysis, good quality data, and actually required data. Out of 100 points, you just need 6 points to basically do your job, but we're just carrying the extra load without understanding it. So it's a, it's a proper knowledge on the background of it which we need to work out. The challenge in industry is that we don't normally relate, try to relate to technology much more, but basic knowledge is really, really important. The people who are operating the stuff, they need to know which data is actually affecting them in a good manner or in a bad manner.

That's great. You're— it's this idea of data and having the right data and understanding how to use it. Are there some common issues really? And certainly I can see that connection to sustainability as well. You know, we're— maybe we could just segue to ask you, and you're going to do your presentation at MXO Midwest. What are you hoping people get out of the presentation you're planning to give?

Look, what we can do with 30 years, 29 years of experience in industry is the only thing which you can share is our experience. And the experience is something which is not written in books. Experience is something what people really had to do in the field. Um, there are new guys in the field who need guidance. Unfortunately, because of the internet or something, we just only try to search the thing which we need. We don't look at the big background of it, that how that thing is going to affect others. Our experience, what I'm trying to say, if I want to do this in industry, in this, in this, uh, presentation is to basically share. Don't look at your spot, look at the around the spot. You create a boundary that who are going to affect for that, what is the use of sub-metering, is sub-metering a liability for the industry to understand, do they really need to, you know, uh, invest money in it, what are the actual ways. Now again, the problem is people now to go for I need to have a saving project, I need to have a saving project, and this thing has the biggest myth. Saving projects always cannot be a sustainability project. There's 2 different, and I'm going to come back to that. Mostly people, when they look at the saving project, they normally look at an industrial standard ROI of 3 years. They say, oh, if it's a 3-year ROI, it's a saving project for me. And I'm not— if it's more than 4 years, I'm not going to do it. I can guarantee you that mostly if we have to really walk on the path of sustainability, the sustainability projects are not going to be 3 years paper. They are going to be a longer-run payback. And then one has to be committed. If they are committed towards sustainability, yet they need to look at the bigger picture. Now, I'm not trying to discourage people that they don't be sustained. The sustainability projects can be turned into saving projects if you look at a broader picture. Just don't look at how it's going to save the energy. You need to look at how it is going to actually affect your complete operations. How it's going to reduce your cost of operation, how it's reduced your maintenance, how it reduced your supervision. And when you are— when you look at the broad picture, we all are in industry, Mike, and both Mikes, I can tell you that, that a normal industry, 15 years is the life cycle, or what we call book value of an equipment, right?

Sure.

So you have to understand what you actually spend in 15 years to operate that equipment. You operate, for example, you, you use— I'm just giving a stupid number of $100,000, right? It's just a number. But when you look into your sustainability projects, you need to look at that. Oh, I spent $100,000 for 15 years, but if I do this, my immediate payback may be 4 years or 5 years, but guess what? My 15 years payback is now going to go for 10 years.

Yeah.

So that's a different mindset. You need to know the tools. I'm just trying to share in this. I would like to share to the industry. how they need to approach when they're looking at sustainability projects, how they need to talk to their finance guys to convince them, yeah, I need this investment, it's going to help industry, but in this manner. Mostly engineers are not storytellers. That's the biggest problem. They cannot— they're the worst salesmen. Let me put it this way. Engineers are the worst salesmen.

For sure. So will you be able, Gurpreet, in your presentation, will you be able to talk about Examples, you know, project examples and things, because certainly the topics you're talking about—

Yes, that's the idea. I will share a generalized way how we looked at the project before and how we look at the project now. That difference will explain a lot to the many people, because when I did the same thing in February for Schneider, I had so many people approached me that, hey, we would like to understand further. Anything which can help industry is going to help everybody. Sustainability cannot be one person's or one organization's goal. Sustainability has to be a common goal of the complete industrial setup. That's how we will achieve it.

Okay, excellent. Well, very good. Um, that's a— there's an awful lot. I can't wait. I know the audience is going to really appreciate your insights and what you have to share. As we get ready to wrap up our— this is just a great introduction to your talk. Do you have any final thoughts for your audience, for the audience today? Um, you know, and maybe, you know, why should they come and hear you speak? Okay.

Well, if you want to come and hear some grandpa stories about industries, then I'm there. But what I'm going to tell you is what is the practical way of doing things. It's not going to be a bookish thing. It's going to be 30 years of how we have rubbed our knees on the ground, how we have learned. This is what we are going to share. And if it helps one or two people, I think I might have achieved my goal.

Very good.

I sure look forward to it.

Yeah, excellent. Thank you. So we want to thank you, Gurpreet, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us to share your insights and just give us a pre— sort of a preview of your presentation. On how we can improve sustainability of operations and, and just to get us excited about MXO Midwest. The event itself is going to happen on September 16th and 17th in Cleveland, Ohio, and we really hope you guys, everybody who's listening, decide to join us there. Join the Industry 4.0 Club, join Caprite, and, and, uh, really get, get the benefit of the entire conference. If you're interested in registering, we'd encourage you to go to the website. Here it is, and sign up. It's not too late. We hope that you're there and really benefiting from all of the great information that's going to be shared in addition to Gurpreet's presentation.

Yep.

The Industry 4.0 Club would like to encourage you to take action. Gurpreet shared some really great ideas, but to advance the deployment of Industry 4.0, read an article, attend a workshop, or develop a smart manufacturing roadmap for your plant or company. Or encourage your plant to do so. We want to know what you're doing. Drop us a note on our LinkedIn page or our website at www.industry4oclub.com and share with us what kind of actions you're taking. We host conversations like this routinely, so if you'd also like to join us for a conversation, please reach out to us and let us know. We'd love to have you on the show. With that, Gurpreet, thank you for taking the time out to join us. Mike, thank you.

Thank you.

as well. Excellent. And we look forward to seeing you in Cleveland.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.