Company Name:

Consortium of Vision Care Ireland and Central Solutions Ltd

Funding Source:

Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnership

Project Title:

Integrated water management in manufacturing environments

Profile Of Companies:

Central Solutions Ltd (CSL) is an indigenous Irish SME, a technical consulting and product firm, which has a Water and Energy Management Practice. Their service includes assisting clients with lifecycle/utility balance maps, visualisations/dashboards, standards certification and water strategies. With responsibility for managing the EPA’s “Large Water Users Community of Practice”, the company is also an approved consultancy for Enterprise Ireland’s Lean Water Programme and the European Water Stewardship Standard in Ireland. Vision Care Ireland is a subsidiary of the American multi-national Johnson and Johnson and the company, located in Limerick, is the largest manufacturing plant of contact lens products in the world. Employing over 900 people at the Irish operation and utilising the most advanced technology in the industry, Vison Care produce Acuvue the leading range of contact lens products. Established in 1995 the facility was originally fitted with six advanced production lines to manufacture one daily disposable contact lens for the European and Japanese markets. Subsequent expansion has seen the plant increase to 35 production lines, manufacturing one-day, fortnightly, monthly and colour contact lenses which are shipped worldwide.

Problem To Be Solved:

Vison Care Ireland was amongst the top water users in Ireland and while they had metering in place with a good oversight of their actual water usage as a whole, they could not clearly see the various sub streams. The exact quantity of water loss through leakage etc. was hard to detect. With no reporting capability, patterns in water usage were also not easily apparent. Lack of reporting hindered the Implementation any kind of KPIs as it was difficult for management with no way of measuring them. While Central Solutions had a strong background in Water and Energy management they understood the opportunity for developing an integrated water management system. They had developed Version 1 of SiteVu themselves, but recognised they didn’t have the in-house resources to develop the more sophisticated and robust Version 2 of the product.

How IMaR Delivered a Solution For Industry:

1. Development of the SiteVu tool which can be implemented in other companies to help reduce their overall water usage. 2. SiteVu can also be employed for water related risk management. 3. Will help with the EU water reduction targets.

Impact For Company:

Vistakon: Oversight of water usage across the facilities part of the plant with positive implications for risk management reduction, EHS compliance and overall facilities costs. Central Solutions: Development a solution they didn’t have the internal skillset to develop in-house.

“The introduction of the SiteVu platform has been a major success to date as it has provided the site with the ability to now monitor and track its water footprint. As a result of this visibility, a number of improvement projects have been identified and implemented so as to further reduce the sites overall consumption. The KPI application is used to alert the relevant owners of abnormal usage within their relevant areas, this ensures that we maintain and sustain the improvements which have been implemented to date” – Patrick O’ Connor (Facilities – Vision Care Ireland)