August 6, 2024 • 19 mins
Operations involve all the activities you need to do to make sure everything runs smoothly.
It’s just like planning a birthday party. From securing the date, inviting guests and getting supplies like decorations and snacks, to setting up the venue, organizing fun games and everyone’s favorite – the eventual clean up.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
High voltage takes center stagein this brand
new season of HitachiEnergy's Power Pulse podcast.
We promise to bring you great contentfrom the brightest minds in the business.
We'll discuss challenges, opportunities,and all the hot topics
any high voltage enthusiasts
or anyone interested in sustainabilityfor that matter, is sure to enjoy.
In this episode of the podcast,we'll tell you about all the bits
and bobsthat make up high voltage equipment.
(00:23):
Our guest is Dirk Uhde, the Global Headof Operations and Health and Safety.
Dirk holds a master's degreein electrical engineering and an MBA.
We felt he would make a particularly good
contribution to this topicbecause his career has been so varied.
He's worked in R&D,quality, product management and sales.
If he had to choose a favorite areaof work, though,
he would freely tell youhis heart is in operations aka
(00:43):
making sure the thousands of daily taskscarried out on the shop floor are executed
seamlessly.
Welcome back to Power Pulse.
I'm your host, Sam Dash,
and today I'm speaking with Dirk Uhde,Head of Operations for High Voltage.
Hi, Dirk. Hi, Sam.
So, Dirk, I first have to ask, is it true
that you ran a 5K in 15 minutes?
(01:05):
That is extremely fast.
It feels fitting that you work in energy,I guess.
Is that right?
It's kind of embarrassing because,
yes, I did, but it's so long ago
that I, that I kind of when I start,
would try to do it right now,I think I would need to double of time.
Yeah, yeah.
(01:25):
People expect you to still performin that way now, right?
Yeah. But, you know, you don't.
And kinda age doesn't help either,I think.
But, see, the story is,and just to give you a quick background
of how this happened is, I was 16.
I was living in the U.S.
preparing for my senior high school year,going to try to enroll for fall sports.
(01:50):
And I had a choice between making footballand basically cross-country.
And so I said, well,
let's take cross-country, I mean, running,everyone can do a little of running.
So and I just didn't really figure outthat they would run seven days
a week, so, it kind of fall into this
and then continued back
(02:12):
when I was back in Germany to my hometown,
and when I was 19, I did theI did 15, 19, 20.
I did 15 minutes for 5 Kand a kind of 32 minutes for 10 K.
And do you still run today?
Not not as much,but you still run for pleasure?
For pleasure I, I try not to look
(02:32):
too much at, the time when I run,because that gives me some frustration.
Yes. Some anxiety.
Yeah. For sure.
So from Germany to France to Brazil.
Can you tell us a bit
about your career trajectoryand how you came to be at Hitachi Energy?
So I've been in this high voltagesomehow business for all of my life.
(02:54):
It was a choice.
I did high voltageengineering at the beginning,
and I started right after studiesin the high voltage business,
was in powertransformers, was in at that time.
So I'm German native.
I worked out of France, started in R&Dand then moved
after 4 or 5 years, to Brazil again.
(03:18):
I started my operational career,kind of, if you would.
Yeah. And what age was that at?
So Brazil.
I was 30, so.
Yeah, I was, youknow, was still in my early career.
Yeah.
I went to Brazil,did a lot of operations, learned a lot.
and then I, you know, my careerjust brought me moving around
(03:39):
Europe, North America, different products,different people, different cultures.
It's just very rich. Yeah,it was very rich.
Did you enjoy?
I get the sense you did,but did you enjoy all that moving around?
Did you find it sort of invigorating to bein all those different communities
and settings?
I think I wanted it,this is what I needed or I felt I
(04:01):
it was giving me the pleasureto move to see certain things
and I feel also it's a,
it's an additional learningon top of the technical learning
because you really see how peoplelook at things differently.
You learn about diversity,you learn about the added value
(04:21):
of people having different opinions.
Yeah, I can imagine that that's a realasset to your work here at Hitachi Energy.
So Hitachi Energy has thisgreat international culture where you work
with people around the tablefrom any cultural background,
from any work part of the countrywith different ideas.
(04:43):
And this is what brings the richnessof what we are doing right now,
because someone will come up with an ideathat you have never figured out.
That brings me actually to a questionI want to get into about your work
here at High Voltage.So you're the head of operations.
How would you explainhow Hitachi Energy assembles a product
and delivers it to the customer?
(05:05):
Where does it all start?
Good question.
Well, see, it startsall with our customer demand
and we need to get our customer demand
and translate itinto our planning process.
So this is what we call let’ssay it’s an operational planning process.
It's kind ofwhere you look into your crystal ball
(05:28):
and you will seewhat will be the customer demand,
not only the one we know,but the one we don't know.
And you translate thisinto your planning process.
So this is the beginning.
Then it gives usa huge amount of information.
It gives us just tremendous amountof information that we need to process.
And here it itcomes where we use some tools.
(05:50):
We use what we call the, an ERP.
It's an Enterprise Resource Planningsoftware that is basically our backbone
operational toolthat we use to plan our operations
from planning, manufacturing, quality,finance, delivery.
Everything is used in this tool,which really is our backbone.
(06:14):
How long has that been in use?
How long has that beensomething that you rely on that tool?
So the tool has been in usefor many years.
That’ssomething that exists in the industry,
but we are now taking a tremendous stepwhere we say we are harmonizing
all those tools around the company,and that's a great asset
(06:36):
because this means we all will workvery similar ways.
We can exchange data.
We talk the same software languageif you want.
Right.
In terms of terminology, I want to ask youabout a term that I've heard recently.
Can you explain to mewhat the feeder factory model is?
So feeder factory is, let me explain.
(06:57):
Let me just go a step back.
So we have our customers and our customersrely on us,
that we understand their needs,and we translate what they need
into our solutionsthat we will provide to them.
And this means
we need to be very close to our customers,not only from understanding that,
but also we want to be close to themin a geographical point of view.
(07:21):
And we do this in what we call
our operating units,the ones that are close to the factory.
And then we need to haveour internal specialists
that are excelling in operational tasks.
So this is what we callour feeder factory.
So our feeder factories, they’re
(07:42):
a little in the,in the back office of our operations.
They assemble modules.
So– What is a module?
It is, take the car industry.
So you want to buy a car.
You get a car which is very customized.
But in the car, you have the engineor maybe the dashboard.
And this is something which for uswe would do in a feeder factory.
(08:05):
So we would take our heart of it,our modules,
and we would do themin a specialized manufacturing plant
that will be, focusing 200%
on quality,on on-time delivery, on efficiency
and controlling all the processesbecause they do all the volumes.
(08:26):
They do this every day in and out.
They do this and then we ship it to our,
close to the customer factories,say we'll customize it
and make sure it fully is alignedwith our customer expectation.
And so I was going to askyou about distance
and shipping as well in relationto feeder factories.
Can you talk about the importanceof where feeder factories are built
(08:49):
and the relationship in terms of distancebetween feeder factories and the client?
Yeah, so we have a global networkand looking into it,
I think we need to understandcomplexity of what we do.
And if we have a complex product,
it will be made out of 10,000
(09:10):
different individual parts.
Right. That's vast.
And those 10,000 parts will come from
several hundreds of different vendorsuppliers.
Right.
So logistics in general is one ofthe challenges that we have to overcome.
And then we will bring itinto one of our feeder factories
(09:31):
that will do those,what I, you know what we call module –
the different parts that we preassembleand then ship to the final factories.
They can sit everywhere around the world.
The criteria is really,we need to have the best
expert specialist in the worldto do the job.
They, so they need to have the expertise,they need to have the knowledge.
(09:52):
Yeah, is it hard to find those expertsto work in those feeder factories?
Not really, because it's such an excitingand interesting job
that people like to work therebecause they know, first of all,
that they work all around the globefor customers all around the globe.
They knowthat, say, will be really learning
(10:13):
the best of the industry ways of
working and proceduresand quality controls.
So when they come, they knowthey will be the best of the world.
That's good.
It sounds like a really exciting placeto be working.
There are many exciting placesin our organization where you can work.
(10:34):
I mean, I am passionate about operations,so for me, operations
obviously is a place to work,but I think there's many, many places
where people feel
that they are really making a differencein what they do every day.
Yeah.
And so in terms of that every day work,I assume
safety must be a pretty big partof the operations you oversee.
How do you implement
(10:55):
safety measures across an organizationthat's so wide, geographically?
And how do you ensure that your suppliers
are also followingthose same safety measures, too?
So safety – you're completely right– is the most important thing.
Safetyis what we call our license to operate.
If you don't fulfill safetyyou're kind of fail on on everything.
(11:17):
So the most important thing isthat we have our responsibility
to make sure every employee that worksfor us
is getting home to his or her beloved ones
in a perfect, safe manner every evening.
And that's our first responsibility.
(11:38):
Now, how do we make this happen?
I think the most important thing is
we need to make surewe have standards in place
where we know exactly each work step,how is each work step done.
And we look into each of those work stepsthat are defined.
We look into how can we optimize them?
(12:01):
How can we mitigate any risks.
So then how can we findnew machines, new tools,
and how can we and also look into
this daily improvement on our safety.
So you're sort of touching on thisalready, but I wonder if you can expand
on this question
I have for you, which is,you know, over the course of your career,
(12:23):
you've continued to reinvest in your work
and found things that excite you.
What is the most exciting thing for youabout the job right now?
What'scausing you to reinvest at this moment?
The question is,why do you have always this passion?
And most important thing about thispassion is, is the people,
(12:44):
the environment you work inand the people you work with.
It comes back to what we said before that
the richness of havingso many different people with different
backgrounds, with different ideasand so much you can learn out of it.
It's a daily learning experience,the job we do.
(13:05):
So that makes it, for me,one of the most valuable experiences.
But on top of it, why I like operations.
It's also because,
you know,you need to focus in, focus out every day.
I might go on to the shop floor looking to
(13:25):
how can we improvefor efficiency on what we do.
And two hours later,
I willlook into a big strategic, decision on
how can we make surewe have enough capacity in three years.
So it's focus in, focus on it.
You never lose the contact to the ground.
(13:45):
And that's so important because this iswhere you get all the feedback.
This is where you always test your ideasand you get so many good suggestions
from people that work with the workingoperations every day, in and out.
You just ask themand you get tons of tons of new ideas.
(14:07):
Yeah, it really sounds like collaborationis at the heart of what you do.
Absolutely.
It's collaboration within
like operations,but also around all the organizations.
So we will look into also, you know,customers, listen to our customers,
listen to people that know something moreabout than us and,
(14:30):
about supply chain or any other fieldyou can you can imagine.
So Hitachi Energy says that it placessustainability at its core.
Can you share some sustainabilityinitiatives or practices
that are currently being implementedwithin operations at High Voltage?
Sure.
see, sustainability
(14:50):
is important for Hitachi,but it's also important for me personally,
I feel working in Hitachi,
I can kind of link my personal convictionwith the company policy
on sustainability, and that's somethingI really feel valuable, for me
personally, that I can goand can go home and talk about what we do.
(15:13):
So we want to decarbonize operations.
That's one of my things where I look intohow can we decarbonize what we do.
We want to generate our own electricity.
We can install solar panels.
We want to reduce waste.
We want to make sure we recycle.
We want to make surewe are not generating any more waste,
(15:38):
CO2, any emissions than we need.
And maybe, you know,that might sound a little general.
I can give you a couple of examples.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a great goal.
I'm curious
as to what you're sort of implementingon the factory level to achieve that.
So first, one of the things we want to dois reduce packing.
(16:00):
Packing is somethingwhere we have to pack things, we ship it,
it needs to be stable.
We have now, we move from
packing in wood to packing in cardboard.
Cardboard is the most environmentalfriendly packing that exists.
So we're moving from one to another.
(16:21):
For those of us
not so familiar with the various carbonfootprints of these materials,
can you say more about why cardboardis more eco-friendly than wood?
Yeah, cardboard is using basically
a small quantity of wood to be produced.
And so with the same amount of initial rawmaterial, you can just produce
(16:42):
about ten, twenty timesthe same amount of packing material.
Well, yeah.
So bigger impactfor the same amount of raw material.
Correct. Yeah.
And other thing is,like in our private life where we move to
electrical vehicles, you know, factories,we're stopping all forklifts that we use
to move material around which were gaspowered to use only electrical forklifts.
(17:07):
So again, something that we do
to make surewe are reducing our carbon emissions.
And then when we can, we obviously want topower them with our own produced energy.
And do you get the sense
that this is the sort of initiativethat is across the industry?
Do you get a senseof where Hitachi Energy lies in the larger
(17:28):
landscape in terms of sustainabilityat the factory level?
I think sustainability is somethingthat a lot of industries are
pursuing right now.
And I think it's rightbecause it's very important.
So I think there's two things.
The first is sustainabilityalways needs to start with a policy.
You need to have a strong policy in place.
(17:48):
It needs to have this push to say
we need to generate ideasto become more sustainability.
So we, in Hitachi Energy,yes, we do have a strong policy.
We are being asked to think out of the boxevery day to find ideas;
how can we make our operationsmore sustainable.
(18:08):
So this is where I thinkthe company culture is very important.
On the other hand,we still want to look what others do
because we're not in a competitionwith anyone.
We want to all work towards the same goal,which is making the world
more sustainable.
So doing somethingthat another one is doing and copying it,
(18:31):
that's a very good thing to dobecause we are all independent.
If we might be competitorsin different industries,
we all can learnworking for the same goal.
Yeah, and sort of learn from eachother's successes and mistakes, I'm sure.
Absolutely.
Dirk, thanks so much for joining us todayIt was a real pleasure.
(18:52):
You've given us a great macro and microview of operations at High Voltage.
And thanks for tuning into this episode of Power Pulse.
Until next time.
And that's it for today.
We'll be back soonwith some more great content.
But, before you go,remember to give us a follow
so you don't miss an episode.
Thanks for tuning in. See you soon!
This episode was brought to you by HitachiEnergy.
(19:13):
Createdand introduced by Bárbara Freitas-Daniels.
Content and scriptwriting by Cassandra Inay.
Guest speaker Dirk Uhde.
Hosted by Sam Dash.
Produced and edited by Creative Chimps.
High voltage takes center stagein this brand
new season of HitachiEnergy's Power Pulse podcast.
We promise to bring you great contentfrom the brightest minds in the business.
We'll discuss challenges, opportunities,and all the hot topics
any high voltage enthusiasts
or anyone interested in sustainabilityfor that matter, is sure to enjoy.
In this episode of the podcast,we'll tell you about all the bits
and bobsthat make up high voltage equipment.
(00:23):
Our guest is Dirk Uhde, the Global Headof Operations and Health and Safety.
Dirk holds a master's degreein electrical engineering and an MBA.
We felt he would make a particularly good
contribution to this topicbecause his career has been so varied.
He's worked in R&D,quality, product management and sales.
If he had to choose a favorite areaof work, though,
he would freely tell youhis heart is in operations aka
(00:43):
making sure the thousands of daily taskscarried out on the shop floor are executed
seamlessly.
Welcome back to Power Pulse.
I'm your host, Sam Dash,
and today I'm speaking with Dirk Uhde,Head of Operations for High Voltage.
Hi, Dirk. Hi, Sam.
So, Dirk, I first have to ask, is it true
that you ran a 5K in 15 minutes?
(01:05):
That is extremely fast.
It feels fitting that you work in energy,I guess.
Is that right?
It's kind of embarrassing because,
yes, I did, but it's so long ago
that I, that I kind of when I start,
would try to do it right now,I think I would need to double of time.
Yeah, yeah.
(01:25):
People expect you to still performin that way now, right?
Yeah. But, you know, you don't.
And kinda age doesn't help either,I think.
But, see, the story is,and just to give you a quick background
of how this happened is, I was 16.
I was living in the U.S.
preparing for my senior high school year,going to try to enroll for fall sports.
(01:50):
And I had a choice between making footballand basically cross-country.
And so I said, well,
let's take cross-country, I mean, running,everyone can do a little of running.
So and I just didn't really figure outthat they would run seven days
a week, so, it kind of fall into this
and then continued back
(02:12):
when I was back in Germany to my hometown,
and when I was 19, I did theI did 15, 19, 20.
I did 15 minutes for 5 Kand a kind of 32 minutes for 10 K.
And do you still run today?
Not not as much,but you still run for pleasure?
For pleasure I, I try not to look
(02:32):
too much at, the time when I run,because that gives me some frustration.
Yes. Some anxiety.
Yeah. For sure.
So from Germany to France to Brazil.
Can you tell us a bit
about your career trajectoryand how you came to be at Hitachi Energy?
So I've been in this high voltagesomehow business for all of my life.
(02:54):
It was a choice.
I did high voltageengineering at the beginning,
and I started right after studiesin the high voltage business,
was in powertransformers, was in at that time.
So I'm German native.
I worked out of France, started in R&Dand then moved
after 4 or 5 years, to Brazil again.
(03:18):
I started my operational career,kind of, if you would.
Yeah. And what age was that at?
So Brazil.
I was 30, so.
Yeah, I was, youknow, was still in my early career.
Yeah.
I went to Brazil,did a lot of operations, learned a lot.
and then I, you know, my careerjust brought me moving around
(03:39):
Europe, North America, different products,different people, different cultures.
It's just very rich. Yeah,it was very rich.
Did you enjoy?
I get the sense you did,but did you enjoy all that moving around?
Did you find it sort of invigorating to bein all those different communities
and settings?
I think I wanted it,this is what I needed or I felt I
(04:01):
it was giving me the pleasureto move to see certain things
and I feel also it's a,
it's an additional learningon top of the technical learning
because you really see how peoplelook at things differently.
You learn about diversity,you learn about the added value
(04:21):
of people having different opinions.
Yeah, I can imagine that that's a realasset to your work here at Hitachi Energy.
So Hitachi Energy has thisgreat international culture where you work
with people around the tablefrom any cultural background,
from any work part of the countrywith different ideas.
(04:43):
And this is what brings the richnessof what we are doing right now,
because someone will come up with an ideathat you have never figured out.
That brings me actually to a questionI want to get into about your work
here at High Voltage.So you're the head of operations.
How would you explainhow Hitachi Energy assembles a product
and delivers it to the customer?
(05:05):
Where does it all start?
Good question.
Well, see, it startsall with our customer demand
and we need to get our customer demand
and translate itinto our planning process.
So this is what we call let’ssay it’s an operational planning process.
It's kind ofwhere you look into your crystal ball
(05:28):
and you will seewhat will be the customer demand,
not only the one we know,but the one we don't know.
And you translate thisinto your planning process.
So this is the beginning.
Then it gives usa huge amount of information.
It gives us just tremendous amountof information that we need to process.
And here it itcomes where we use some tools.
(05:50):
We use what we call the, an ERP.
It's an Enterprise Resource Planningsoftware that is basically our backbone
operational toolthat we use to plan our operations
from planning, manufacturing, quality,finance, delivery.
Everything is used in this tool,which really is our backbone.
(06:14):
How long has that been in use?
How long has that beensomething that you rely on that tool?
So the tool has been in usefor many years.
That’ssomething that exists in the industry,
but we are now taking a tremendous stepwhere we say we are harmonizing
all those tools around the company,and that's a great asset
(06:36):
because this means we all will workvery similar ways.
We can exchange data.
We talk the same software languageif you want.
Right.
In terms of terminology, I want to ask youabout a term that I've heard recently.
Can you explain to mewhat the feeder factory model is?
So feeder factory is, let me explain.
(06:57):
Let me just go a step back.
So we have our customers and our customersrely on us,
that we understand their needs,and we translate what they need
into our solutionsthat we will provide to them.
And this means
we need to be very close to our customers,not only from understanding that,
but also we want to be close to themin a geographical point of view.
(07:21):
And we do this in what we call
our operating units,the ones that are close to the factory.
And then we need to haveour internal specialists
that are excelling in operational tasks.
So this is what we callour feeder factory.
So our feeder factories, they’re
(07:42):
a little in the,in the back office of our operations.
They assemble modules.
So– What is a module?
It is, take the car industry.
So you want to buy a car.
You get a car which is very customized.
But in the car, you have the engineor maybe the dashboard.
And this is something which for uswe would do in a feeder factory.
(08:05):
So we would take our heart of it,our modules,
and we would do themin a specialized manufacturing plant
that will be, focusing 200%
on quality,on on-time delivery, on efficiency
and controlling all the processesbecause they do all the volumes.
(08:26):
They do this every day in and out.
They do this and then we ship it to our,
close to the customer factories,say we'll customize it
and make sure it fully is alignedwith our customer expectation.
And so I was going to askyou about distance
and shipping as well in relationto feeder factories.
Can you talk about the importanceof where feeder factories are built
(08:49):
and the relationship in terms of distancebetween feeder factories and the client?
Yeah, so we have a global networkand looking into it,
I think we need to understandcomplexity of what we do.
And if we have a complex product,
it will be made out of 10,000
(09:10):
different individual parts.
Right. That's vast.
And those 10,000 parts will come from
several hundreds of different vendorsuppliers.
Right.
So logistics in general is one ofthe challenges that we have to overcome.
And then we will bring itinto one of our feeder factories
(09:31):
that will do those,what I, you know what we call module –
the different parts that we preassembleand then ship to the final factories.
They can sit everywhere around the world.
The criteria is really,we need to have the best
expert specialist in the worldto do the job.
They, so they need to have the expertise,they need to have the knowledge.
(09:52):
Yeah, is it hard to find those expertsto work in those feeder factories?
Not really, because it's such an excitingand interesting job
that people like to work therebecause they know, first of all,
that they work all around the globefor customers all around the globe.
They knowthat, say, will be really learning
(10:13):
the best of the industry ways of
working and proceduresand quality controls.
So when they come, they knowthey will be the best of the world.
That's good.
It sounds like a really exciting placeto be working.
There are many exciting placesin our organization where you can work.
(10:34):
I mean, I am passionate about operations,so for me, operations
obviously is a place to work,but I think there's many, many places
where people feel
that they are really making a differencein what they do every day.
Yeah.
And so in terms of that every day work,I assume
safety must be a pretty big partof the operations you oversee.
How do you implement
(10:55):
safety measures across an organizationthat's so wide, geographically?
And how do you ensure that your suppliers
are also followingthose same safety measures, too?
So safety – you're completely right– is the most important thing.
Safetyis what we call our license to operate.
If you don't fulfill safetyyou're kind of fail on on everything.
(11:17):
So the most important thing isthat we have our responsibility
to make sure every employee that worksfor us
is getting home to his or her beloved ones
in a perfect, safe manner every evening.
And that's our first responsibility.
(11:38):
Now, how do we make this happen?
I think the most important thing is
we need to make surewe have standards in place
where we know exactly each work step,how is each work step done.
And we look into each of those work stepsthat are defined.
We look into how can we optimize them?
(12:01):
How can we mitigate any risks.
So then how can we findnew machines, new tools,
and how can we and also look into
this daily improvement on our safety.
So you're sort of touching on thisalready, but I wonder if you can expand
on this question
I have for you, which is,you know, over the course of your career,
(12:23):
you've continued to reinvest in your work
and found things that excite you.
What is the most exciting thing for youabout the job right now?
What'scausing you to reinvest at this moment?
The question is,why do you have always this passion?
And most important thing about thispassion is, is the people,
(12:44):
the environment you work inand the people you work with.
It comes back to what we said before that
the richness of havingso many different people with different
backgrounds, with different ideasand so much you can learn out of it.
It's a daily learning experience,the job we do.
(13:05):
So that makes it, for me,one of the most valuable experiences.
But on top of it, why I like operations.
It's also because,
you know,you need to focus in, focus out every day.
I might go on to the shop floor looking to
(13:25):
how can we improvefor efficiency on what we do.
And two hours later,
I willlook into a big strategic, decision on
how can we make surewe have enough capacity in three years.
So it's focus in, focus on it.
You never lose the contact to the ground.
(13:45):
And that's so important because this iswhere you get all the feedback.
This is where you always test your ideasand you get so many good suggestions
from people that work with the workingoperations every day, in and out.
You just ask themand you get tons of tons of new ideas.
(14:07):
Yeah, it really sounds like collaborationis at the heart of what you do.
Absolutely.
It's collaboration within
like operations,but also around all the organizations.
So we will look into also, you know,customers, listen to our customers,
listen to people that know something moreabout than us and,
(14:30):
about supply chain or any other fieldyou can you can imagine.
So Hitachi Energy says that it placessustainability at its core.
Can you share some sustainabilityinitiatives or practices
that are currently being implementedwithin operations at High Voltage?
Sure.
see, sustainability
(14:50):
is important for Hitachi,but it's also important for me personally,
I feel working in Hitachi,
I can kind of link my personal convictionwith the company policy
on sustainability, and that's somethingI really feel valuable, for me
personally, that I can goand can go home and talk about what we do.
(15:13):
So we want to decarbonize operations.
That's one of my things where I look intohow can we decarbonize what we do.
We want to generate our own electricity.
We can install solar panels.
We want to reduce waste.
We want to make sure we recycle.
We want to make surewe are not generating any more waste,
(15:38):
CO2, any emissions than we need.
And maybe, you know,that might sound a little general.
I can give you a couple of examples.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a great goal.
I'm curious
as to what you're sort of implementingon the factory level to achieve that.
So first, one of the things we want to dois reduce packing.
(16:00):
Packing is somethingwhere we have to pack things, we ship it,
it needs to be stable.
We have now, we move from
packing in wood to packing in cardboard.
Cardboard is the most environmentalfriendly packing that exists.
So we're moving from one to another.
(16:21):
For those of us
not so familiar with the various carbonfootprints of these materials,
can you say more about why cardboardis more eco-friendly than wood?
Yeah, cardboard is using basically
a small quantity of wood to be produced.
And so with the same amount of initial rawmaterial, you can just produce
(16:42):
about ten, twenty timesthe same amount of packing material.
Well, yeah.
So bigger impactfor the same amount of raw material.
Correct. Yeah.
And other thing is,like in our private life where we move to
electrical vehicles, you know, factories,we're stopping all forklifts that we use
to move material around which were gaspowered to use only electrical forklifts.
(17:07):
So again, something that we do
to make surewe are reducing our carbon emissions.
And then when we can, we obviously want topower them with our own produced energy.
And do you get the sense
that this is the sort of initiativethat is across the industry?
Do you get a senseof where Hitachi Energy lies in the larger
(17:28):
landscape in terms of sustainabilityat the factory level?
I think sustainability is somethingthat a lot of industries are
pursuing right now.
And I think it's rightbecause it's very important.
So I think there's two things.
The first is sustainabilityalways needs to start with a policy.
You need to have a strong policy in place.
(17:48):
It needs to have this push to say
we need to generate ideasto become more sustainability.
So we, in Hitachi Energy,yes, we do have a strong policy.
We are being asked to think out of the boxevery day to find ideas;
how can we make our operationsmore sustainable.
(18:08):
So this is where I thinkthe company culture is very important.
On the other hand,we still want to look what others do
because we're not in a competitionwith anyone.
We want to all work towards the same goal,which is making the world
more sustainable.
So doing somethingthat another one is doing and copying it,
(18:31):
that's a very good thing to dobecause we are all independent.
If we might be competitorsin different industries,
we all can learnworking for the same goal.
Yeah, and sort of learn from eachother's successes and mistakes, I'm sure.
Absolutely.
Dirk, thanks so much for joining us todayIt was a real pleasure.
(18:52):
You've given us a great macro and microview of operations at High Voltage.
And thanks for tuning into this episode of Power Pulse.
Until next time.
And that's it for today.
We'll be back soonwith some more great content.
But, before you go,remember to give us a follow
so you don't miss an episode.
Thanks for tuning in. See you soon!
This episode was brought to you by HitachiEnergy.
(19:13):
Createdand introduced by Bárbara Freitas-Daniels.
Content and scriptwriting by Cassandra Inay.
Guest speaker Dirk Uhde.
Hosted by Sam Dash.
Produced and edited by Creative Chimps.
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