The same barriers that Project Managers encounter when working with customer companies on any type of operational or financial process change will also arise in metal plating shops' environmental projects. The actual (and sometimes perceived) barriers that may impede a metal plating shop's adoption of cleaner production technology include:

• management resistance to change,
• lack of awareness of new technologies,
• lack of in-house technical expertise,
• lack of funding for capital expenses,
• fear of incurring new environmental compliance problems, and
• fear of compromising product quality or process efficiency.

These barriers are discussed in greater detail below.

Expert advice from MMP and OTA and information about other shops' successful experiences with cleaner production can overcome some of these barriers. However, a metal plating shop may have to learn a new way of tracking or analyzing its costs in order to appreciate that a particular technology investment is sound despite daunting capital expenses.

For a few metal plating shops, it may be true that there is currently no viable cleaner production alternative that makes sound business sense. Due to the rapid rate at which technology is evolving, however, there may well be a cleaner production alternative that would be appropriate for these shops in the near future.

1. Management Buy-In. Management skepticism or resistance to change can sabotage the implementation of cleaner production technologies. This is particularly true if a shop has had a prior unsuccessful experience with a technology upgrade, or if senior managers are reluctant to move from the model of pollution control to pollution prevention.

Example: In a 1994 survey of 318 metal finishing shops, 11.7% of the shops that use chlorinated solvents indicated that they planned to continue the use of these chemicals, in large part because of unsuccessful experiences with alternative solvents.²⁴

Response: Success stories abound of plating shops improving their efficiency of production by adopting cleaner production technology despite initial management skepticism (for example, the Robbins Company of Attleboro, Massachusetts).²⁵

2. Risk of New Environmental Compliance Problems. In selecting corrective practices to extend bath life, a plating shop must be careful to avoid incurring new regulatory problems.²⁶ Some plating shops may be reluctant to shift from a production process with which they have compliance experience to a different production process that might raise new and unfamiliar regulatory issues.

Example: In the same 1994 survey of metal finishing shops, some job shops indicated that substituting a non-chlorinated cleaner for a chlorinated solvent created a new wastestream that was more difficult to deal with than the original solvent waste.²⁷

Response: Many plating shops have reported success in substituting a non-chlorinated cleaning system for a chlorinated solvent without triggering additional regulatory requirements. For example, an electroplating facility in Rhode Island replaced its 1,1,1-trichloroethane (TCA) degreasing operation with an ultrasonic cleaning system. Although the facility's ultrasonic system generates a new waste stream, this waste is less hazardous and easily processed with a membrane technology to regenerate rinsewater.²⁸

3. Costs. Limitations in the way that many plating shops analyze and track their costs may discourage exploration of certain cleaner production technologies. Most shops do not look beyond capital and operating expenses to costs that are harder to quantify, such as the costs associated with environmental compliance or increased risks to worker health and safety. Instead, shops rely heavily on estimated payback periods that have high degrees of uncertainty.

Example: According to a 1996 estimate, the high capital costs associated with replacement of cadmium cyanide with zinc chloride process baths in rack plating operations would result in a payback period of 115 years.²⁹ This estimate alone, without additional cost information, would discourage virtually all plating shops from looking at this technology option.

Response: Many plating shops that have tracked a wider array of costs have found implementation of cleaner production alternatives to be effective and efficient. For example, the Elk Grove Plating Company in Elk Grove, Illinois, cited a variety of reasons for its satisfactory switch from hexavalent chrome plating to trivalent chrome plating, including: increase in workplace health and safety, decrease in wastewater discharge permit violations, reduction in recordkeeping and paperwork, and elimination of use of secondary acid catalysts.³⁰

4. Customer Acceptance. Customer specifications may not accomodate minor product changes introduced by the implementation of a cleaner production technology.

Example: Many job shops have no input into the design of the parts they plate. In some cases, customer needs are indeed inflexible (e.g. military specifications), and job shops therefore do not propose modifications that would introduce cleaner production (e.g. adding drain holes to parts in order to reduce plating bath solution drag-out).³¹

Response: Plating shops can often work successfully to win customer acceptance of cleaner production technology modifications. For example, the Elk Grove Plating Company went to great effort to persuade customers to accept trivalent chrome finish instead of hexavalent chrome finish before it modified its plating operations.³²

6. Production Efficiency Issues. Many plating shops share the impression that cleaner production technologies slow down the rate of production by increasing the process cycle time.

Example: Although the first generation of aqueous cleaning methods did not match chlorinated solvents' performance, aqueous cleaning technology is rapidly evolving. Nevertheless, many plating shops are still reluctant to explore alternatives to chlorinated solvents out of concern that other cleaning methods will decrease their production rate.

Response: Certain cleaner production alternatives may increase the amount of time spent on a specific step in the plating process (e.g. adjusting the rinsewater contact time for a workpiece in order to reduce the amount of plating bath solution drag-out). However, such alternatives may increase a plating shop's overall production rate. For example, after the Elk Grove Plating Company switched from hexavelant chrome plating to trivalent chrome plating, the plating time for each workpiece was extended from 1.5 minutes to 4. Yet overall productivity increased, because the trivalent plating system cut plating reject rates by 98%.³³

In addressing actual or perceived barriers to cleaner production technology implementation by plating shops, it is important to remember that cleaner production technology is constantly changing; what may not be compatible with product specifications or process efficiency requirements today might well be sufficiently improved in the near future. OTA is an excellent resource for up-to-date technological information for Project Managers and their customer companies because OTA's engineers are skilled at toxics use reduction planning and stay current with technology innovations that companies have adopted successfully.

Sectors - Metal Finishing