Circular processes
Reduce, reuse, rethink—that is DAF’s approach to improving the sustainability of its packaging material. Suppliers, DAF and dealers share best practices across Europe.
Waste management
DAF is continuously working to reduce the amount of packaging material that arrives with parts at the production facilities. In a ‘war on waste’ awareness campaign, the company’s procurement teams and factory workers are encouraged to engage with suppliers to cut down on— or even refuse to accept —unnecessary packaging. For that reason, the focus is on reusable packaging. Components are loaded into a DAF-designed return packaging at the supplier’s premises.
For years, DAF has a policy of sending zero waste to landfill. Waste that cannot be recycled is incinerated to generate electricity. DAF has reduced residual waste from the office buildings by 78% in just one year, after launching a program in late 2022 to improve waste separation in office environments.
At our production premises, we have our own recycling stations that collect over 100 different types of materials from concrete and cardboard to plastics, wood and metal. Our waste collector and treatment partners process and sell these materials for reuse.
In 2023 several improvements have been implemented to further reduce disposable waste.
- Process improvements in the engine plant have improved oil separation from waste water to further reduce chemical waste and improve waste water quality;
- Since 2023, the oil-water mixture that is released from periodic cleaning of the “waste water oil and gasoline separators” is processed by the water purification plant located on the DAF Trucks Eindhoven site; this has led to a reduction of 35,000 kg of chemical waste per year;
- Sorting campaigns have been launched to make people aware how to sort waste.
- DAF started waste separation in office environments.
Packaging roadmap PACCAR Parts
PACCAR Parts is DAF’s parts supply organization. Its packaging roadmap focuses on product packaging, storage, and transportation materials. The goal is to achieve a fully circular process for packaging materials by 2050, with the ambition of a 35% reduction by 2030 in the total amount of single use packaging materials shipped to dealers. In 2023, the organization reduced plastic and cardboard in its parts’ packaging sent to dealers by 7% and 2% respectively.
PACCAR Parts plans to use more recycled packaging material*, reduce one-way shipments, increase the use of returnable packaging, and facilitate recycling by switching to mono materials and reducing ink usage.
* Through switching to 100% recycled filling material at just one Parts Distribution Center (PDC), DAF’s parts division was able to save a CO2 equivalent of 175 trees.
Total productive maintenance
Effective maintenance of our production equipment and machinery contributes significantly to our sustainability goals by prolonging the lifetime of our installations, preventing leakages and reducing energy and oil usage. We use an approach called ‘Total Productive Maintenance’ (TPM), which creates a partnership between machine operators, maintenance staff and engineers responsible for the installation.
TPM is multifaceted and includes cleaning as well as predictive maintenance. Instead of maintaining machines at fixed time intervals (whether they need it or not), sensors gather information on critical parameters such as temperature or vibration (Shop Floor Data Capture). This is then combined with the skills and experience of operators (who are also responsible for the routine care of the equipment) to plan when maintenance is necessary.
Besides avoiding downtime, this allows us to reduce the unnecessary replacement of parts and consumables such as oil. TPM extends the productive life of equipment. Optimal maintenance of items such as electric motors, bearings on rotating equipment, and burners in ovens has a major effect on reducing our energy consumption.
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