Facilitating and Measuring Progress

In addition to our global, company-wide environmental performance goals, each Ford facility also has a comprehensive set of environmental targets and uses a detailed scorecard to report against these targets, so that we can track and accelerate improvements. Progress toward the targets is reviewed throughout the year by senior management at regular Business Plan Review meetings. In addition, these targets become part of the performance review metrics for every plant manager and regional manufacturing manager, as well as others in the management hierarchy up to the executive vice president of manufacturing and labor affairs. For more information on our overall sustainability governance, integration and management processes, please see the Governance section.

We have developed a series of tools and processes to manage environmental issues in our operations that help us facilitate and measure progress on key issues including energy use, water use, and waste generation and disposal. These tools help us accomplish four tasks that are central to advancing and measuring our progress on environmental issues:

• Setting corporate-, regional- and facility-level performance goals and targets;
• Managing internal and external goals, targets and regulations;
• Evaluating, standardizing and spreading the use of best practices across our facilities to help us meet performance goals; and
• Tracking performance using accurate and standard data to help us assess and improve performance.

Environmental Operating System – managing environmental performance goals, targets and regulatory requirements

Ford’s Environmental Operating System (EOS), which is fully aligned with the Ford Production System (FPS), provides a standardized, streamlined approach to maintaining compliance with all legal, third-party and Ford internal requirements, including government regulations, ISO 14001 and Ford’s own environmental policies, and business plan objectives and targets. In addition to facilitating compliance with external regulations, the EOS also helps us develop and track internal environmental performance goals at the corporate, regional and facility level.

Energy Management Operating System – managing energy-related goals, targets and performance improvements

In 2013, we finalized the global rollout of our Energy Management Operating System (EMOS). We developed this system to provide a common and global structure to support and maintain energy-reduction actions, to achieve the corporate goal of improving global energy use per vehicle produced by 25 percent between 2011 and 2016. The EMOS is our mechanism for integrating energy-efficient principles into the facility design, manufacturing/engineering processes, and operations of Ford Manufacturing, Office and Engineering facilities. The system is aligned with our Ford Production System (FPS) and ISO 14000/50001 principles, and it leverages existing lean manufacturing principles including Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) protocols and Six Sigma tools.

Plant Energy Teams lead the implementation of the EMOS. At each plant, an energy management team develops a plant-level energy road map, which provides an overview of planned energy actions and a forecast of how well the plan will meet the corporate energy reduction objective. As an input to the road map, the energy team performs an “energy health assessment,” which evaluates the plant’s operational performance, provides comparisons to other plants, and provides a list of best practices the plant can use to improve energy efficiency. Plant startup and shutdown processes are a key area of focus for energy teams, as these processes have significant impacts on plant energy use and provide major opportunities for energy use reduction. The team is also responsible for “energy opportunity evaluations,” which seek to identify additional opportunities to further improve energy efficiency beyond those provided in existing best practice lists. These additional efficiency opportunities could be based on peculiarities of the specific plant or they could be new ideas that contribute to future best practices that might be implemented in other plants as well.

In addition to the Plant Energy Teams, the EMOS also includes three other teams of people working cooperatively to support the work of the Energy Teams:

• Facility Changes – this group is responsible for spreading best practices across Ford facilities by developing standards and specifications that are used in planning for the future (both facility and process) and getting the standards embedded into future product/project plans.
• Data Management – this group ensures robust and timely data for reporting and analysis to support Plant Energy Teams and other decision-makers.
• Energy Supply and Quality – this group addresses energy purchases to ensure reliable and low-cost energy

Global Facilities Forum – developing global standards and best practices

In 2011, we established the Global Facilities Forum (GFF) to standardize processes for construction and refurbishment of Ford facilities. The GFF includes representatives from Ford’s Environmental Quality Office, which oversees the environmental performance of Ford manufacturing facilities and Ford Motor Land Development Corporation (or “Ford Land”) which manages the construction of all Ford-owned facilities and the maintenance of Ford’s nonmanufacturing and commercial real estate facilities. The Forum also includes representatives from each of Ford’s operating regions. Before establishing the GFF, each region and operating group within Ford maintained its own set of standards, which made it more difficult to capture, record, and spread best practices and lessons learned. The GFF develops and manages facility specifications and construction practices globally to achieve cost and sustainability objectives and spread best practices across our facilities. The GFF also prioritizes incorporating energy and sustainability objectives into building standards. Another key improvement of the GFF is a focus on life cycle costs, not just first or implementation costs. This facilitates the implementation of many energy-efficiency and other environmentally preferable strategies, as well as reducing total costs to the company. This standardization of best practices, especially environmental best practices, is becoming increasingly important as Ford continues significant investments in new facilities in Asia and refurbishing existing facilities in the United States.

Facility Performance Improvement – setting goals and performance improvement plans for existing plants

We implement year over year, internal facility-level goals at our existing plants for environmental performance in key areas, energy use, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, waste to landfill, water, and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions for assembly facilities and hydrocarbon use for powertrain facilities. Through this program we determine the Ford plant with the best performance in each of these areas and set annual improvement targets for other plants based on ultimately meeting this stretch goal. In addition to setting internal facility goals, we also develop a road map for each facility to help them meet these goals. For example, through this program, we identify best practices plants have used to achieve their excellent performance, we evaluate these best practices for replication at other facilities, and we communicate best practices through a “single point lesson” system. This process will be fully implemented globally in 2014.

100 Point Sustainability Program – setting goals and performance improvement plans for new or refurbished plants

We use a 100 point sustainability program to incorporate environmental performance best practices into new plants, plants that are being renovated for a new vehicle programs, and plants that are otherwise being refurbished. We have established a rating system for each plant for each of several key environmental areas – energy, CO₂ emissions, water, waste to landfill, and VOC emissions for assembly facilities and hydrocarbon use for powertrain facilities – and a rating for each major action taken to achieve performance improvements in these areas. These initial ratings provide a baseline for future improvements and provide a way to prioritize different improvement actions. We then set point-based improvement targets for new plants and existing plants that are being retooled for a new vehicle program or otherwise being refurbished as part of the product development and budgeting process. These targets include a road map of specific actions to reach the sustainability point targets for each area.

Global Emissions Manager – measuring performance to track progress

To facilitate performance tracking, we launched the Global Emissions Manager database (GEM) in 2007. This industry-leading database provides a globally consistent approach for measuring and monitoring environmental data, which helps us track and improve our efforts to reduce water use, energy use, CO₂ emissions and the amount of waste sent to landfill. GEM also provides a library of environmental regulations relevant to each plant, significantly increasing the efficiency of tracking and meeting those regulations.