Philip Paschen reports on MFCA

As a medium-sized company can you still elude the issue of sustainability today? No, Philip Paschen summed up in his lecture in the Resource Efficiency Colloquium. He is Head of Department and is responsible for strategic planning at the Witzenmann GmbH in Pforzheim. Above all, sustainability is necessary for economic reasons. Today many customers, particularly in the automotive industry, have high standards when selecting suppliers. Sustainability standards as those of the so-called Global Compact are almost mandatory today, if you will not lose your customers. These include ecological requirements as well as social standards and transparency issues that have to be met worldwide.

But companies also benefit otherwise of the approaches originally come from the environment and the sustainability debate. For example, Material flow cost accounting (MFCA): Together with the Institute for Industrial Ecology the Witzenmann GmbH has tested this method, with which one can determine the loss of value caused by waste and scrap . Paschen asserted that the analysis yielded amazing results and savings, its technical implementation is now tested in his company. With the method you get a different view of the costs in companies, which is not provided by the conventional software systems in this way.

In the discussion Paschen stressed how important it is to include the individual employee in all of the improvements . They usually have the crucial know-how, and without them a the continuous innovation can not be realized. If in addition to cost even pollution can be saved by the activities, they have a very high priority in the company.