Sustainable Manufacturing Starts with Energy Insights

“Verdigris was down to the detail, so it was useful to know where we were losing money. It was good to know that my hunches of savings or wasting can be monitored.”
— Jim O’Brien, Sunnyvale Operations Manager, Vention Medical

The Challenge

Vention Medical is a global leader in complex medical device design development, manufacturing, and assembly. With 13 facilities, a newly formed sustainability council, and hospitals increasingly demanding environmentally-conscious suppliers, Vention was seeking energy usage data and insights for potential savings.

They also needed a reliable system to track equipment malfunction to maintain sensitive environments which are critical to medical device manufacturing. Vention turned to Verdigris to get help going above and beyond their customers’ specific requirements for sustainability.

The Approach

Vention selected their Sunnyvale facility, which has several clean rooms, for the proof-of-concept test. They wanted to learn how to best prevent downtime for important equipment such as HVAC, which could jeopardize FDA-approved clean room conditions, contaminate materials, and ultimately increase production costs.

Verdigris quickly installed proprietary hardware and was immediately able to showcase data from Vention’s lighting and HVAC systems. Vention team members viewed their energy data with an online dashboard, and also received custom monthly reports to highlight energy trends and uncover inefficiencies.

Working together, Verdigris provided depth of data and breadth of actionable recommendations that audiences across the company understood. Verdigris’ advanced data tracking provided Vention an example of how to get ahead of increased reporting requirements from their buyers.

The Results

Vention was very pleased with Verdigris' quick installation without building downtime, and its user-friendly insights. Verdigris was able to go above and beyond what local utilities provide, notifying Vention about equipment downtime and parsing out usage by end-use in real time.

In addition to operational recommendations, Verdigris data revealed Vention was being charged for peak demand hours and that a cheaper plan was available to them, simply by changing the way they were being billed.

“What I found useful was the dashboard and the continuous monitoring. Yours was down to the detail, so it was useful to know where we were losing the money,” said Jim O’Brien, Sunnyvale Operations Project Manager. “It was good to know that my hunches of savings or wasting can be monitored.”

What’s Next?

Now on track to save $3,000 a year, Vention sees savings applications in all its global facilities.

With Verdigris’ real-time data, companies like Vention can gain greater insight into achievable sustainability goals. Whether it’s starting with low-hanging fruit or progressing along deeper savings, Verdigris helps companies reach their sustainability and cost savings goals.