100% transparency in energy requirements

How we are focusing on green production at HARTING

Among many other daily challenges, sustainability guidelines, eco-regulations, carbon footprint performance feature are ongoing topics in production. It is no longer just about what products and how fast a factory delivers, but also about how it produces. The use of green energies, the degree of CO₂-neutrality, the
scope of resource-saving processes and closed-loop concepts – to an increasing extent, today’s markets and customers are making their decisions according to these criteria. As far back as the early 1990s, the HARTING Technology Group saw environmental protection as a responsibility to which industry is committed.

HARTING has managed to produce ecologically, while saving costs and resources at the same time. Economic efficiency and sustainability go hand in hand.

In order to ensure the necessary process stability and precise production in our production plants, the use of state-of-the-art technology is a basic precondition. Likewise, maintaining 100 per cent transparency in energy requirements. Meanwhile, the topics of transparency, resource conservation and energy saving have been firmly anchored in HARTING´s corporate strategy for over thirty years.

Making production fit for the future!

HARTING´s corporate responsibility concerns not only processes and production steps in plant operations, but also the entire product life cycle along the value chain. In addition, this includes resource extraction, the further processing of the materials and raw materials as well as the final disposal and recycling count.

In order to create transparency and analyse potential savings, HARTING is currently wiring every machine with meters measuring electricity, compressed air and heat. In this way, energy can be seamlessly allocated to each assignment and also allows us to push our pursuit of energy efficiency to the limit. Moreover, this also establishes full transparency of the use of environmentally relevant substances.

Worldwide, with regard to Scope 1 and Scope 2, HARTING is on its way to being able to report a product type carbon footprint in connection with the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). Individual process steps are made transparent in order to be able to make concrete statements about the product to be manufactured and the required CO2 consumption of the producing plant. This can then be broken down to the product type.

"Measure it or forget it," is how Dr Andreas Imhoff, Managing Director Operations at HARTING, sums things up. "In order to change something, initial transparency is an important starting point. Afterwards, sensible action steps based on this are possible. It is also important to consider that - in order to produce in a truly sustainable manner - 100% sustainable green energy must be sourced. However, given that green energy is not sufficiently available worldwide, the amount of green energy that is taken from the grid must also be supplied again as green energy elsewhere. And this is where the topic of biogas enters the picture at HARTING, which does not require an electricity storage system."

Short throughput times ensure sustainability

Moreover, the carbon footprint can also be improved by deploying innovative technology in the area of mould and tool making. HARTING has recently made progress in leaps and bounds in these issues and has developed a wealth of measures to conserve resources. This includes sustainable tool design and resource-saving tool use. In addition, cooling techniques in injection moulding also hold major savings potentials. Thanks to the latest temperature control and cooling technologies, the Technology Group is achieving savings per component in the high double-digit percentage range. This also has the advantage that we have been able to reduce cycle times.

Important fields of action at HARTING for resource-efficient production processes:

• Monitoring of production processes
• Investment in new processes and machines
• Use of the production facilities' own waste heat for other rooms
• Expansion of the own energy share, for example through the installation of a PV system or geothermal energy