Welcome to the January 2011
issue of ENERGY MONTHLY

In this issue...

• Lighting Insight: The Health of Your Company
• Productivity: Retrofitting on Your Company’s Best Time
• Meet the Team: Jesse Wexelblatt

Introduction

Lighting upgrades provide many important benefits for our customers. Dramatically reduced energy costs coupled with tax incentives and utility rebates make the financial decision highly attractive. However, there are additional benefits that are often overlooked, which may provide even greater rewards for progressive managers.

We are devoting a significant portion of this month’s newsletter to articles discussing the great productivity improvement that can result for improved lighting. Employment costs are significantly greater than energy costs in most facilities. Reducing energy costs by 50% or more will contribute handsomely to the bottom line, but increasing productivity by only 1 or 2 % will produce even greater profits. Lighting upgrades produce both!

All of the statistics show that we have an increasingly older workforce. Aging employees frequently bring great value to an employer; their experience and work ethic are often the backbone of the organization. However, the aging process also brings certain drawbacks. Employees over the age of 40, while hardly old, already require significantly more light for a task than they did while in their 20s. This is often the cause of accidents and even more often the cause of picking, packing, and production errors.

Statistics show that older workers also lose color discrimination, another cause of manufacturing flaws. Fortunately, a well designed lighting upgrade can solve all of these problems and allow the workforce to make real productivity gains.

By increasing light levels in the manufacturing, picking and packing areas, workers can better see picking and packing documents, thereby decreasing errors and improving productivity. As every businessperson understands, the costs of shipping the wrong products are huge both in terms dollars and in customer satisfaction. Similarly, in the manufacturing process, being able to discriminate by both shape and color is often essential. Improving quantity, quality, and color perceptivity of lighting will go a long way towards helping an aging work force continue to be highly effective.

The fact that this can be achieved while driving down energy costs is an added bonus.

I pride myself that Aelux is not simply a seller of replacement fixtures. During our extensive audit process we talk to employees and supervisors and attempt to identify areas where inadequate lighting may be costing far more than you know. We then design a system with maximum efficiency and trhe right amount of light for each area and your workforce.

Lighting Insight: The Health of Your Company

Can Lighting Be the Culprit of Poor Health & Lost Revenue?

As a business, we consider many factors when thinking of the health and well-being of our employees. We think about air quality, ergonomic, and ways to reduce stress, increase safety, and reduce health care costs. We pay mass dollars to have our air tested on a regular basis, and often spend too much money on gadgets that claim to be the lasted and greatest ergonomic device to replace all others. We hire risk managers, and have an occupational therapist on retainer to keep our company healthy.

Yet, all along, we may be overlooking one factor that contributes towards many of these health risks, such as safety and which can greatly reduce our company’s health care cost—AND THAT IS LIGHTING.

Light has value

Research demonstrates that light has a profound impact on people—on their physical, physiological, and psychological health, and on their overall performance—particularly in the workplace. Yet, we often fail to give it adequate consideration.

Consider this: If better lighting in your facility will help prevent accidents, and the many costly side-effects they create, chances are better lighting can do a lot more; for example, help workers improve eye-hand coordination, and thereby improve productivity and lower reject rates. (Source, PDF)

To achieve everything that improved lighting can offer, start by asking some questions:

• Why was lighting installed here in the first place?
• Is current lighting sufficient?
• Is necessary lighting non-existent?

Effects of poor lighting quality

People working in poor or low quality lighting can suffer from eyestrain, fatigue, and headaches, resulting in poorer performance. Causes include, a too low lighting level, glare from light sources and luminance ratios that are not well balanced in the workplace and on the task. Headaches can also be attributed by lamp flickering, caused by magnetic ballasts operating at too low of a frequency. In some cases, flicker can also cause stress in people.

Not only the lighting level, but all aspects of lighting quality play a role in preventing accidents. Non-uniform lighting can create adaptation problems that hamper proper visibility. Excessive glare too leads to severe adaptation problems, with all the accompanying negative consequences. Moreover, stroboscopic effects of lighting can be hazardous in situations where it is important moving parts of machinery be correctly seen. Finally, lighting giving poor color rendering may lead to misjudgments of potentially dangerous situations. (Source, PDF)

There is clear evidence that many types of industrial accidents can be avoided by providing better seeing conditions.

The Real Numbers

“In a typical commercial building, the cost of employing people outnumbers the cost of operating a lighting system by some 150 to one. Therefore, while even as high as a 50 percent reduction in lighting costs using energy-efficient lighting can have a positive impact on the bottom line, just a one percent increase in productivity can dramatically improve profitability. Economists are acknowledging that the economic boom in the 1990s was driven by productivity gains.” (Source)

PROPER ENERGY EFFICIENT LIGHTING = BOTTOM LINE SAVING + INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY + INCREASED SAFETY + INCREASED EMPLOYEE HEALTH

Productivity: Retrofitting on Your Company’s Best Time

You know your company is badly in need of a lighting retrofit, but you fear that the time needed to complete the retrofit would greatly reduce productivity. We say… it is not true

Foremost, a lighting retrofit can greatly increase productivity. Furthermore, with the right retrofit company, it can be as quick and painless as removing a band-aid. How about referring to Aelux here and how we work at the customer’s convenience? We do have 5 different & unique examples listed below of exactly how Aelux worked at the customer’s convenience. Do you just want a sentence stating, “Aelux takes pride in working at the customer’s convenience and recognizing the client’s business needs. “

Imagine a Lighting Retrofitting on your Time, with your company’s Safety in mind, and with the goal of increasing your employees Productivity and Morale.

Time:

For Metro Truck, Aelux was able to perform the installation during business hours, with little to no work interruptions, and not only dramatically increased the light levels but at a 66% energy cost reduction.

Aelux accommodated Jerith’s schedule, working around the clock to complete the lighting retrofit project in just 4 days!

Motorola knew they wanted to complete their retrofit project in conjunction with the installation of a conveyor upgrade in order to minimize disruptions at the facility. Aelux’s logistics and project management teams collaborated to ensure that the system installation went off without a hitch. Fixtures arrived ahead of schedule, materials were staged with precision, and the project was planned with such a level of perfection that that Motorola was able to convert their inefficient metal halides to high intensity T5HO fluorescents without missing a beat.

Productivity & Morale:

ALMO’s facility management personnel were so delighted with the dramatic improvement and resulting reduction in maintenance expense in the warehouse that they asked us to redesign their office lighting.

Safety:

Safety was at the top of Random House list when their retrofit planning began, so in order to assuage perceived safety concerns from complete darkness, the Aelux retrofit wired each occupancy to control 2 of the 3 lamps such that when the aisles were vacant, and a single T5HO lamp remained on.

John Bachner, Communications Director at the National Lighting Bureau says it well, “You need to get rid of the notion that the idea is just to reduce lighting consumption. Lighting is installed to help people do their jobs.”

Meet the Team: Jesse Wexelblatt, Sales

Jesse joined Aelux last year after graduating from the University of Delaware with a degree in Operations Management. He quickly learned about the industry by accompanying senior Aelux personnel in performing lighting surveys thereby being exposed to various existing lighting systems. Working with colleagues at Aelux, Jesse learned how to identify the optimal solution of providing required light levels while using the least amount of energy possible. This year Jesse will be traveling around the country to perform complimentary lighting analyses from which Aelux will design customized solutions.

In his free time Jesse enjoys playing soccer and managing a football team (fantasy, that is).