Briggs & Stratton, LLC: Energy performance

Better Buildings, Better Plants Challenge partners strive to decrease portfolio-wide source energy use intensity (EUI), and to increase the percent improvement compared to a set baseline. Briggs & Stratton's portfolio comprises 8 facilities including manufacturing, research, testing, warehousing/distribution centers, and corporate offices. Identified energy saving opportunities are shared among the manufacturing facilities. Briggs & Stratton has made substantial use of system assessment and energy Kaizen events to identify energy saving opportunities, with an implementation rate of over 80%.

Looking at the percent improvement in energy performance across all facilities can help a company quantify the benefits of process and facility upgrades.  It can also identify when forces beyond the control of a company cause temporary setbacks in the journey to sustainable energy efficiency. Despite unavoidable weather changes and volatile market forces affecting production volume Briggs and Stratton continued a strong commitment to energy efficiency and environmental stewardship in 2015. Briggs & Stratton continues to make progress toward the corporate goal of 25% reduction in energy intensity through self-assessment, facility and process improvement.

Briggs & Stratton has a mixture of facility types including casting, metal fabrication, machining, assembly operations, and warehousing. Often these facilities produce a variety of products with dissimilar energy intensities. Seasonal change in the product mix provides an added challenge to quantifying improvement in energy intensity. Energy intensity is currently calculated by dividing total energy use across all U.S. facilities by total revenue. As the use of energy submetering expands at the plants, more detailed data will be available to provide a clearer understanding of facility level energy consumption.