Case study·Industrial Manufacturing·Shannon, Ireland

Manufacturing energy down 20% in 12 months

By 2011, John Crane Ireland's energy spend was trending upward at around €80k a year with no corporate energy policy and no clear place to start. They engaged ResourceKraft to measure, interpret and reverse the trend — and within a year had cut electricity usage by 20%.

Sector

Precision manufacturing

Where

Shannon Free Zone, Co. Clare

Engagement

Advisor monitoring + sub-metering

The win

20% electricity reduction · ISO 50001

At a glance

John Crane (Ireland) Ltd is regarded as the world's leading manufacturer of welded metal bellows seals, supplying the oil & gas, chemical, pharmaceutical, paper and mining industries. With a workforce of around 100 in a 40,000 sq ft facility in the Shannon Free Zone, it is part of the John Crane Group — a subsidiary of UK technology conglomerate Smiths Group. Facing a rising energy bill and no clear strategy, John Crane engaged ResourceKraft to baseline consumption and build a long-term approach around the ISO 50001 standard.

CustomerJohn Crane (Ireland) Ltd
GroupSmiths Group plc
Facility40,000 sq ft · ~100 staff
Starting point~€80k/yr and rising, no energy policy
Approach15 sub-board meters + 4 wireless meters
StandardISO 50001 (first in Smiths Group)

A technician machining a precision seal component on the shop floor at John Crane's Shannon manufacturing facility. — The Shannon Free Zone facility floor — precision manufacturing brought under the same 15-meter monitoring programme.

01The brief

A rising bill, no place to start

By 2011 John Crane Ireland had an upwardly trending energy consumption of around €80k per annum and was struggling to bring it under control. With no corporate energy policy in place and no idea where to attack the problem, they called for help and engaged ResourceKraft to measure, interpret and analyse the situation — and advise on a way to reverse it.

The company was already comfortable using international standards to run the business — accredited to ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001 — so they naturally looked to the energy standard, ISO 50001, as the framework for their long-term approach.

02What we did

Baseline first, then chase the cost

The first recommendation was simple: get a baseline. Find out where the high energy users actually were before changing anything.

Fixed sub-metering across the plant. 15 fixed meters on sub-boards covering all areas, connected to Advisor for graphical analysis — installed in 2 days with no operating downtime.
Out-of-hours visibility. For the first time the team could see its out-of-hours consumption profile and take immediate steps to cut cost without impacting production.
Oil and gas monitoring. 4 additional wireless meters extended monitoring to oil and gas, surfacing more cost to identify and eliminate.
Event-based alerting. Advisor's events automatically contact the right people when a predefined condition is reached — with monitoring on the compressor, main incomer and selected sub-boards of particular interest.

Once we began to use the information from ResourceKraft Advisor, we saw a 20% reduction in electricity usage in 12 months. A year later we became the first site in Smiths Group plc to achieve ISO 50001 — and four years on we're still seeing incremental cost improvements.
EHS Manager, John Crane Ireland

03The outcome

From firefighting to a repeatable method

After a few months of data collection, the site had a clearly defined energy baseline. Armed with it, management could justify capital investment to replace inefficient equipment and design process-policy changes that reduced consumption without compromising delivery performance. In the first year, electricity costs fell by €25k.

Advisor energy reports are now an integral part of the Key Performance Indicators at John Crane Ireland, and the success at the Shannon plant has attracted interest from several other John Crane locations abroad. The team used Advisor to systematically chase down costs — identifying opportunities, quantifying the cost/benefit, and launching energy-management programmes against the most promising candidates.

20%

electricity reduction in 12 months

€25k

electricity cost cut in year one

1st

site in Smiths Group to ISO 50001

Installation of the initial 15 sub-board meters took just 2 days with no operating downtime.

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