Associated Materials – Krishna Chaitanya Vinnakota – 2014

Goals

Krishna Vinnakota spent his summer at Associated Materials LLC (AMI), the parent organization of several pioneering exterior building products and distribution companies. AMI is the only vertically integrated company in the exterior building products industry with 11 manufacturing locations and over 125 distribution centers catering to the North American market. Vinnakota did a top down review of the company’s energy spend, which was in excess of $15 million. He was tasked with working on ways to identify and implement energy savings across supply centers.

Solutions

Vinnakota primarily worked on three main projects. He developed a novel strategy to procure energy by taking a proactive approach to buying energy. He also worked on a simple, but highly effective way of conserving energy during winters by installing strip doors. Vinnakota also worked on various lighting retrofit projects at different supply centers in Ohio. He ran a pilot project at two supply centers using light and motion sensors, and the results of the project were used for calculating the cost and return on investment of such projects.

Potential Impact

Vinnakota’s new strategy for energy procurement could result in a 20-50 percent reduction in energy expenditure in some supply centers. Also, his strip door project, if implemented in all 125 supply centers and 11 manufacturing plants, has the potential to save approximately half a million dollars per year.