In Oregon, Sony goes ISO 14001

In January 1998, without receiving a single nonconformance, Sony Disc Manufacturing (Springfield, OR) achieved registration to ISO 14001, the international standard for environmental Management Systems (EMS). Two auditors from Underwriters' Laboratories thoroughly audited the facility for four days in December 1997.

Sony is the largest optical disk manufacturer in the world. An originator of the digital media revolution, Sony has produced more than 1.5 billion CDs to date. Old-timers out there might recall that the CBS/Sony Group established the first CD plant in the U.S. - Digital Audio Disc Corp. in Terre Haute, IN in September 1984.

Today, SDM operates four U.S. plants, one in Pitman, NJ, one in Carrollton, GA, two facilities in Terre Haute, and the three-year-old facility in Oregon, its newest. Two of these other SDM facilities also received ISO 14001 certification this year. Disk manufacturing capacity for SDM is now more than 38 million units a month in everything from CDs to DVDs. SDM-Springfield alone, operating 24-7, has a monthly capacity of 10 million units, running 22 Sololiners, in-line disk replication cells integrated by Sony, which use custom-built Sumitomo model SD-30 injection molding machines.

In manufacturing alone, SDM provides premastering and mastering, replication, screen making and printing, packaging, distribution, and order fulfillment services. Managing such operations to ensure customer satisfaction requires a commitment to quality and to efficient manufacturing. James Frische, president of SDM, says compliance with ISO standards proves this commitment to the marketplace. Achieving ISO 14001 compliance with no nonconformance proves to all that SDM's people can work well together in well-managed teams.

Company-Wide Commitment

Jeff Omelchuck is a principal of International Quality Assoc. Inc. (IQA - Portland, OR), a training and consulting firm specializing in helping its clients in the Northwest United States develop and implement effective management systems. Omelchuck says that the requirement for ISO 14001 registration will probably "trickle down" throughout the industry, but not nearly as vigorously as has ISO 9000.

"It's clear why a customer would require a supplier to be ISO 9000 registered - in hopes of a better quality product. The motivation to insist on ISO 14001 registration is less clear. With less commercial pressure, companies must weigh the costs and benefits of achieving ISO 14001 registration themselves."

Michael Dougherty, quality assurance manager at SDM-Springfield, says that ISO 14001 compliance has now become a Sony corporate directive throughout all of the company's facilities in all of its divisions. "We see ISO EMS as our corporate responsibility, as part of our being a good corporate citizen." Sony Electronics' plant in San Antonio, TX was the first plant to become ISO 14001 certified.

"We saw what was done in San Antonio, and what others were doing in Pitman and Terre Haute, too," Dougherty continues. "People I work with also saw it, people at the level of our senior vice president of operations. He's an engineer, a safety professional who believes that being environmentally conscious is a smart way to do business. He gave the ISO 14001 project his personal support, and made sure we had the resources to do it effectively."

The project started in earnest in Oregon in January 1997. A benchmarking gap analysis was performed to determine where the company stood. It became apparent that many of the ISO 14001 elements were already in place. One reason was the company's existing ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS). It received ISO 9002 certification in September 1995, just before its grand opening, and was upgraded to ISO 9001 status after a six-month follow-up audit. All of SDM's U.S. optical disk manufacturing facilities are ISO 9000 certified.

"SDM-Springfield is in a 'green' state," Dougherty explains. "It's a new facility, it's only three years old, and it was designed from the ground up to be environmentally efficient as well as providing manufacturing efficiencies. Even so, the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality issues strict annual goals and requirements for its toxic use reduction program. So we had strong environmental management programs already in existence when we started up, just like we had strong quality systems in place for ISO 9000, right from day one."

It didn't take long to see that the broad participation of each of SDM-Springfield's nearly 400 employees was critical to success. "This is not the kind of program that a few people can do for, or to, the company. Everybody has to know how they affect the environment, and how not conforming to standards will affect the environment, even in driving to work. We had to have intensive training sessions, and each session had to be specially developed for each area our employees work in," says Dougherty.

A Green Process

Disk replication in and of itself has to be a very "green" process. A single track on an audio-CD is 1.6 um wide (that's about .000063 inch). The submicron-sized pit and land reliefs representing the binary zeros and ones of the digitized analog sound recording are molded into the CD's single track in a spiral starting at the center and winding outward. Tolerances are even tighter in higher density formats, so manufacturing must, of necessity, be clean and green.

To determine which parts of the operation affected the environment, the multidisciplined project team broke operations into 58 different processes and subprocesses, everything from manufacturing processes to cafeteria operations. Nine different categories of effect were identified and each was rated high, medium, or low.

"This made it very clear which parts of our operation needed to be tightly controlled," says Dougherty. Based on this understanding, management identified 12 objectives for improvement, including reducing nickel consumption (electroformed nickel plating is used in making disk stamper mold inserts, called the "mastering" phase of the manufacturing process) replacing wood pallets with plastic returnables for incoming jewel cases, increasing regulatory inspections, and reducing power consumption.

Some of the objectives were accomplished in just a few months. A formal, computer-based system has been put in place to track even the smallest improvement project, and to communicate progress and results. These reports are integrated with both QMS and safety and health issues, and are reviewed monthly by a management committee. Environmental documentation has been centralized and is available to all.

SDM-Springfield has found that ISO EMS has had a positive influence on the bottom line, since its reductions in nickel consumption and implementation of energy-saving automatic utility shutoffs have reduced costs, for instance. Through a system of internal audits, the company regularly evaluates its performance against ISO 14001 elements, so further cost reductions certainly are possible. However, like Dougherty, many at the plant feel that the biggest benefit of the project has been the heightened level of awareness everyone now has about his environmental responsibilities and what each person can do to make a difference.