Sustainable Living: Going green is a smart business move

Via
Times Herald Record
New York

Many U.S. companies have found that "going green" is not only good for the environment, but also for the bottom line. DuPont was able to cut its energy use by 7percent in four years.

In the process, it slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 72 percent, and increased its output by 30 percent.

This made stockholders very happy. Linda Fisher, DuPont's vice president of environment, health and safety, says: "What started as an effort to address our carbon footprint has turned out to be financially a very good thing."

Complete Article

Can China Sustain Growth Spurt?

Via
Time

Finding the Right Balance

By Pieter Bottelier and Gail Fosler

Until a few years ago, the big question was, is China's growth for real? Now the question is, How long can it last? Even with the U.S. economy slowing, the concern is not so much that China will run out of resources or markets to sustain high growth, but that economic imbalances are becoming too severe.

Put simply, China has been investing too much, too fast, particularly in its export-oriented manufacturing sector. The most striking evidence of this is the relatively small role Chinese consumers play in the economy. Household consumption as a percentage of GDP fell to 36% in 2006, perhaps the lowest such ratio in the world. At the other end of the scale is the U.S., with a household consumption–GDP ratio of 72%. For years the U.S. has been consuming too much and saving too little. China has the opposite problem.

China's imbalances are likely to get worse. This is largely because the country's spectacular economic boom is driven by a self-sustaining flywheel of rapid productivity gains and increasing profits, which generates excess capital that is in turn invested in more manufacturing capacity. This is why the country's trade surplus with the rest of the world has been rising at an alarming pace, growing nearly 50% to a record $262 billion last year (although the trade gap narrowed in the final three months of 2007). Because many Chinese companies are awash with cash, traditional policies aimed at slowing investment growth, such as raising interest rates, seem to have lost much of their effectiveness.

Complete Article

Iron & Steel Production Increasing In China

Via
China Economic Net

By Su Min

Shandong Laigang Group is located in the foothill of the mountainous area of Middle Shandong province, a typically seasonal water-deficient area in North China. Several years ago, an expert affirmed that this area could only support a steel enterprise with the production scale of a little more than 2 million tons due to the inadequate water resource. However, in recent interview, our journalist learned that Laigang's steel output had realized a leap from 2 million tons to 10 million tons from the beginning of the Tenth Five-Year-Plan period, and its total water consumption only equaled to that in 1995, when the steel output was only 1.12 million tons. In 2005, water consumption per ton steel has been decreased to 3.5 tons, taking the lead in China and approaching the advanced level in the world. This year, Laigang Group got a new level in main technique equipments by eliminating old ones. Till the end of October of this year, it eliminated two large-scale coke ovens, three electric ovens, four 120-cubic-meter blast furnaces. It's estimated by experts that if the fresh water consumption of all steel enterprises nationwide can obtain Laigang's standard, we can save over 2 billion liters of fresh water per year, more than the water storage of Gezhouba.

This year, the iron and steel industry implemented earnestly the industry policies of the state, hastened the steps in restructuring, independent innovation, energy conservation and emission reduction, and made great efforts to realize the strategic shift from scale expansion oriented to quality and efficiency, therefore, new progresses have been made in the development of speed, quality and efficiency.

Over the past several years, China's iron and steel industry has not only met the demands of national economy and development for steel products, but also blazed a scientific development path of optimal structure and adjusted development mode, hastening the progress from a big steel country to a steel power.

Complete Article

Outsourcing Boom Expected

Via
ZDNet

A weak global economy coupled with the need to cut costs is expected to encourage a growth in outsourcing in 2008A weak global economy and the need for businesses to cut costs are predicted to drive outsourcing growth up in 2008.

More than half (53 percent) of companies plan to increase outsourcing spending in 2008, up from 38 percent in 2006 and 48 percent in 2007, according to a survey of 250IT professionals by US-based outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) company Syntel.

Bharat Desai, chief executive of Syntel, said outsourcing is one industry that will not suffer from the crisis in the credit markets.

Desai said in a statement: "In a weak or uncertain economy, companies look for technology solutions that will increase productivity, efficiency and savings."

Complete Article

Tool Cleaning Tips

Via
Semiconductor International

Sustainable Chamber Cleaning Solutions:
The Back End of the Front End

Sustainable and production-proven chamber cleaning solutions allow device manufacturers to deliver increased productivity and reduce environmental impact while "taking out the trash."


In most manufacturing processes, tool cleaning is often an afterthought in the process design and execution. Its impact is generally thought of as little more than housekeeping, akin to sweeping the shop floor at the end of the day. However, in microdevice fabrication, cleaning plays a critical role in the manufacturing process. The choice of technique affects not only device yield, but also fab productivity and environmental impact.

Because cleanliness is such a concern for device manufacturers, production equipment is housed in ultraclean environments, while the substrates themselves are transported in sealed carriers and transferred robotically into vacuum chambers and coater tracks. And no wonder. Microscopic detritus can ruin high-end processors retailing at $1000 a piece, extinguish pixels on the flashiest of flat screens, and darken conversion efficiencies of solar panels to gray skies-only returns.

Despite all of this best practice, deposition processes, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), coat parts of the chambers as well as the substrates with their gas-to-solid chemistries. While wafers and glasses move on to further device-building steps, chamber walls and mechanicals accumulate ever thicker and non-homogenous layers of unwanted waste. As a result, timely and efficient cleaning of production chambers to remove device-threatening particles and maintain process stability is required to protect hard-won yields.

Most cleaning processes employ reactive gas-surface chemistries to volatilize the dross. The typical active cleaning agent is free fluorine. However, the traditional gases used to deliver this fluorine tend to be hard-to-abate, perfluorocarbon (PFC) gases, which contribute substantially to global warming.1

Complete Article

Unique Robots In Delhi

Via
The Hindu

NEW DELHI:

Coinciding with this year’s Auto Expo beginning January 10 will be the first-ever Robo Expo-2008 that will showcase cutting-edge technologies in robotics that will contribute to the growth of Indian industry, particularly the fast-growing auto sector.

Being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry-Innovation Mission, the exhibition will also give an opportunity to see unique robots and new robot launches for the first time in India.

According to a senior CII official, with $14 billion investments under way in the auto sector, robots can maximise safety, productivity, quality, cut labour costs and overcome the ever-difficult shortage of skilled labour in automobile manufacturing. Cutting-edge technologies in robotics will contribute to lead Indian industry into the domain of innovation, setting them ahead in the race for safety, quality and efficiency, he added.

Complete Article