Michael UngarCEO of the Industry 4.0 Club

Manufacturing Equipment Energy Savings: Reduce Waste & Save Thousands

3 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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2:04

In this segment, the presenter explains how common operational habits in industrial parts‑washing facilities lead to significant energy waste. Workers often turn on the washer’s heating system (electric or gas) as early as 3 AM, even though the first parts may not be processed until 6–7 AM, resulting in 2–4 hours of unnecessary heating. The tanks typically need only 15–30 minutes to reach operating temperature. Additionally, sprayers are frequently left off during this early heating period, creating hotspots that can damage heat exchangers. The speaker notes that most washers retain enough heat to continue processing parts for about two hours after the workday ends without reheating, yet many facilities are hesitant to turn off the heat in the afternoon. By adjusting startup times to 30–60 minutes before production begins, facilities can achieve annual energy cost reductions ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.

Chapters

Yeah, so what we've found in multiple cases is that people will come in and so maybe the first person comes in at 3 o'clock in the morning and they're kind of the guy that turns on all the lights or woman who turns on all the lights. And part of their job may be to go back to the washer and kick on the heat, which could be either electric or gas. And so say they're doing this at 3 AM and the first part doesn't run for 2 to 4 hours later. So maybe the first part's not coming in through until 6 o'clock in the morning, 7 o'clock in in the morning, but this is just how they do things. There's so much waste going on in that space, and I would say probably 15 to 30 minutes is all that those tanks typically need to get to operating temperature. So they're sitting there heated for, you know, 3 hours. Wow. On top of that, a lot of times they're not turning on the sprayers at that time so that the nozzles are not spraying in those tanks, and so they can get hotspots in their systems as well, which can have an impact on your heat exchangers. So there's really a lot of impact there. On the other side of the day, if they were to do a study and look at how long their washer retains heat for, most manufacturers will find that they've got probably 2 hours at the end of the day that they can continue to run parts without actually heating the tanks. And they won't lose enough temperature that they're going to be outside of their process parameter. And so we've done this at quite a few accounts. I would say there's maybe a little bit less energy around people turning the heat off in the afternoon, maybe a little bit of fear around that, but it really does retain temperature. And in the morning, just that, that quick change can be thousands or even tens of thousands of annual savings. To just turn your system on 1 hour or 30 minutes before the part is going to run.