Business

A new IBM consulting offering can help clients lower their environmental impact, increase efficiency and reduce costs by applying Lean Six Sigma principles to energy and water usage throughout their operations.

"There's a fundamental truth to understanding and improving any aspect of a company's performance -- if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." said Dave Lubowe, global leader of IBM's operations strategy consulting practice. "This applies as much to a company's energy and water consumption as it does to anything else, and our new offering can help clients apply this principle to make their businesses greener."

IBM's Green Sigma(TM) consulting offering is based on Lean Six Sigma, a business strategy for carefully analyzing operations to improve overall efficiency, lower costs, increase quality, and add, change or eliminate activities and processes to improve overall performance.

This new offering applies these principles wherever energy and water are used throughout a client's operations -- transportation systems, datacenters and IT systems, manufacturing and distribution centers, office facilities, retail space, research and development sites, etc.

The constraints and costs of energy and water usage are rising at an accelerating rate, with a significant impact on business operations and financial performance. In addition, companies are coming under increasing pressure from governments, advocacy groups, investors, prospective employees, and consumers to make their operations, products and services more socially responsible, particularly regarding the environment.

IBM's own conservation efforts have saved 4.6 billion kWh of electricity and $310 million in costs, and avoided over three million metric tons of CO2 emissions since 1990. The company's work-at-home program for employees saves roughly eight million gallons of gasoline annually.

Click here to learn more about IBM's operations strategy consulting offerings.