Volkswagen Pune Plant 'Thinks Blue': achieves enormous Results in 2015

Volkswagen had initiated a programme called “Think Blue Factory” in 2012 for its manufacturing plants. The initiative largely focused on employing green technology in the facilities, thereby promoting sustainability in the manufacturing process. The results for the Pune plant (2015)have now been disclosed and are more than satisfactory, to say the least.

The global target set by Volkswagen to reduce the impact of manufacturing processes on environment is 25%, but the Pune facility has been able to do more than that in specific parameters. While it lessened energy consumption by 27.5%, CO2 emissions have been reduced by 26.1%. The company has been able to achieve substantial results on other parameters like specific ‘Waste Generation’ and ‘Water Consumption’ as well. While the former was reduced by 20.0%, the latter came down by 17.6%. Overall the plant was able to reduce the impact of manufacturing processes by 20.6%. It is one of the 27 layouts of Volkswagen where the company implements ‘Think Blue Factory’ programme.

Reassuring the automaker’s commitment to a sustainable environment, Dr. Andreas Lauermann, president and managing director of Volkswagen India Private Limited said, “Volkswagen Pune Plant has been working consistently towards achieving environment-friendly manufacturing from 2012 and has already recorded an impressive 20.6 % reduction overall through five defined areas of focus. Volkswagen is committed towards sustainability and the measure undertaken by our teams working on ‘Think Blue. Factory’ programme ensure that we fulfil our self-defined targets.” He added, “We do not stop here. We are investigating and implementing more and more measures that contribute to environment-friendly manufacturing and protect our resources for the future. We also have a knowledge-sharing platform wherein we and our global colleagues share all the implementations which are studied and applied as per relevance for the local plants. Through this, we are ensuring that the best practices travel worldwide and contribute on a bigger scale in the respective plants.”

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