Environment and safety

Workplace safety

Safe workplaces are prerequisites for healthy, motivated and satisfied employees and contribute to a high extent to operating our production processes, the quality of our products and the permanent increase in the worth of our corporation.

Mercedes Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. pays special attention to establishing, maintaining and improving safe production circumstances.

Work safety at our plant, in its manifold field of activity, covers the elaboration and operation of various planning, technology, organizing and approach processes.

With the help of the best-applied technology and innovative solutions, we prevent accidents at the workplace, contribute to the safety and health of our employees and make sure that the Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. remains impeccable.

Workplace safety

OHSAS
célok

OHSAS
politikai
célok

OHSAS
tanusítvány

OHSAS
Zertifikate

OHSAS

Work and health protection activities are an organic part of the corporate strategy of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd.

For the purpose of the health protection of our employees and partners and maintaining the appropriate work safety as well as to improve work conditions our company elaborated, operates and constantly improves the Workplace Health Safety and Security Management System in accordance with the OHSAS 18001 Standard.

The work safety and health protection strategy of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. was stated in its Occupational Health Protection and Safety policy and the goals specified therein, in compliance with the directives of the Daimler Group:

By means of operative measures we support the preservation of our employees’ health, performance, and satisfaction
We keep a thorough work safety and health protection protocol of the highest standard
When creating operational processes and working environment we take the most recent scientific results in relation to workplace safety and health protection in consideration
Our managers are devoted to helping improve the corporate approach to workplace safety and health protection with the example they show with their own attitude
Our goal is to realize constant improvement when creating the workplace, working environment and processes for our employees
Our goal is to decrease the frequency and rate of accidents, to minimize the loss of working time due to accidents/illnesses
Using financial assets in the most efficient manner to maintain and improve a safe and health protecting work environment

Our common goal is to realize the vision of “Healthy employees at a healthy company.”

Environmental protection

Our company considers environmental protection an organic part of our corporate strategy and policy. Our motto is “Innovation for sustainability”, which is represented in our business decisions and actions. If we produce good quality products by using our resources in an optimized way, it will be in the interest of our environment, too.

In order to ensure constant improvement, our company aims at utilizing the best available technologies (BAT, meaning Best Available Technology). By means of this, we are capable of reducing our impact on the ecosystem to the least possible level when it comes to utilizing the energy, emission of materials or the generation of waste. The objective of our company is to redirect operational and assisting materials back into the production processes, so they can be re-used multiple times, and also recycle the by-products of production. All our measures aim at reducing the environmental load down to a minimum.

In order to ensure “green production” we constantly control and measure all the impacts on the environment (air, noise, waste, water, soil, natural resources.) In the course of production, we aim at load the environment by the direct and indirect processes and in using the products we manufacture to the least possible extent.

Energy efficiency

In the spirit of constant improvement of efficiency in our factory we operate ISO50001 Energy Management System Standards and we have also implemented a number of measures in 2017. Some of these are described below:

Dynamic Air Volume Control:
The paint shop is the biggest consumer in our factory. The comfort ventilation of the hall is provided by 4 air handling units that perform three tasks. They provide fresh air, build overpressure, which is of primary importance for the purpose of clean space, and provide for the heat balance in the building.
Under various environmental parameters and operating circumstances these tasks have different performance demands. By means of a minimal rebuilding of the equipment (expanding the instrumentation) and by re-programming the control unit based on a new logic, we managed to realize air exchange that exactly fit these demands, instead of the former fix channel pressure operation (which goes with almost constant air volume flow.) With this not only the energy demand of the fans decreased significantly but the heat, and consequently the gas consumption in the heating periods as well, due to the lower air exchange rate.

Optimization of the operation time of hydraulic aggregates:
We operate an energy efficiency team at the Kecskemét factory. Each production facility has an own energetics coordinator whose task is to increase the energy efficiency of production equipment in cooperation with the central energy supply department. In the year of 2017, one of these production-related measure was the shutting down of hydraulic aggregates in the body shop outside operation times. We determined its necessity and realized this measure after a site survey with the coordinator.

Lighting modernization:
It is very important for our company to keep up-to-date with regards to technological innovations, so innovation is everywhere on the site from trigenerative energy to lighting systems. For lighting the halls we already use resource-saving LED technology in several halls and we are continually examining how they could be used in special production processes. For this reason, after a number of quality tests last year, we started to use this technology inside the surface testing light tunnel as well.

With the above measures, we reduced the electricity consumption of our plant by 1376 MWh. This equals to the yearly electricity demand of more than 3500 households in Hungary and we thus prevent 502 tons of carbon dioxide to get into the environment each year. The total life cycle (80 years) of 117 oak trees would be required to absorb this carbon dioxide quantity.

EMAS

In 2011, before production was launched, we had successfully introduced the EMAS III (1221/2009/EG) European Standard, which includes the ISO system in order to also constantly improve the environmental performance of the company. Upon the re-certifying, in February 2015 our company met the strict requirements by outside certifying companies once again and passed the auditing without any deviations or mistakes, so the environment controlling system elaborated by the environmental protection group has been in operation for four years now. The system aims at constantly improving and operating the plant’s environmental protection program.

The environmental protection and energy utilization group of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. stated the objectives for an effective integrated environmental- and energy management system in agreement with the directives of its environmental protection and energy politics. These goals were determined by the leading management of the company in the interest of continuously improving the performance and energy efficiency.

Building an integrated management system in the field of environmental protection and energy efficiency
Establishing environmentally sound and energy efficient production through reducing the utilized natural resources
Ensuring sustainable waste management
Minimizing the emission of noise and of materials loading water and air
Increasing the energy-consciousness of our employees and partners
Constantly reducing the energy usage of the work site

Waste management

As to waste management, Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. considers it a fundamental objective to prevent the generation of waste in the course of production and to constantly reduce the quantities of it. We also aim at recycling our waste to the largest possible extent. In order to realize these goals, we collect waste selectively at the plant with the help of the collecting isles and labeled containers that are accessible on the site. Nearly 100 various types of waste are generated at the plant, which will be handled by audited waste companies with the necessary licenses for waste handling and operations.

From the aspect of waste reduction and re-utilization, on the basis of quantity and cost factors, we chose three kinds of waste: glues, paint shop system washing liquids and the metal-hydroxide sludge forming in the sewage cleaning facility.

In the paint shop, we wanted to reduce the liquid waste containing solving matter from washing the system each time a new color is used on the line by increasing the size of color blocks. Optimizing the production this way we managed to realize a 16,7% rate waste reduction.
By increasing the efficiency of the water eliminating press we managed to increase the dry-matter content of the metal-hydroxide sludge in the course of clearing the technological sewage in the paint shop.
The re-utilization rate of hazardous waste was very low in 2014, due to the waste materials eliminated in the burning facility. In the year 2015, we placed great emphasis on contacting waste managers who have the capacity to handle these types of waste with adequate utilization technologies. We could relatively easily find a company for recycling the materials in the high solving matter content washing liquids, whereas choosing the right handling company for re-using washing liquids with low solving matter content was somewhat more difficult, due to the local circumstances.

The various types of sludge from the sewage clearing facility of the paint shop were used as covering material for the hazardous waste depot. In the case of non-hazardous materials, the quantity of community waste was drastically reduced, as examining the waste it could be proven that a significant part of it was miscellaneous packaging material. We then qualified a large part of the community waste to be mixed packaging waste, so we had to handle only the actually existing community waste by depositing. The mixed packaging waste was forwarded for RDF utilization. These were the most important measures for waste utilization, but we were, of course, considering utilization possibilities for smaller quantity waste as well. We eventually found a way to recycle materials in damaged bumpers, and since April 2016, 100% of the polluted fabric waste material has been re-used.
By September 2017 we managed to achieve a utilization rate of 99.85% in the case of hazardous wastes and 96.37% in the case of non-hazardous waste materials, and we continue to work on further improving these rates in the future.

Nature protection

Following the directives stated at a corporate level, we launched a project aiming at reducing carbon-dioxide emission at our plant. The goal is to achieve the 20% decrease that we scheduled by the deadline of 2020 as early on as possible. We wish to achieve this goal in compliance with the European Union and local regulations and by locating and realizing the possibilities for reduction within the plant borders.

There are at present 35 emission point sources on the size of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. Constant emission measuring takes place on the emission points of the paint shop. Beyond the direct emission measuring, we carry out regular air quality (immission) measure within the closer surroundings of the plant. In the course of the regular observation of the direct and indirect emission at the plant, no official threshold levels were ever exceeded.

Sewage emitted by the plant can be of a technology-related or social type, depending on where it is produced. Sewage generated in social premises flows into the communal cleanser while technological sewage is purified and under constant controlling before it leaves the plant into the sewer system.

Rainwater is directed from the entire plant site into a separate rainwater pipe system and will then be stored in the rainwater reservoirs.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The first “PickItUp!” voluntary garbage picking day was organized in 2011 for the first time in Hungary. The goal of the program is to raise the awareness of the resident population of the importance of environmental protection and the preservation of natural values. In cooperation with the Kiskunság National Park we took part in the campaign in 2013 and 2014 as well, and by collecting the garbage, we helped in cleaning an area of natural land under protection situated close to our plant.

Természetvédelem

Követve a konszernszintű célkitűzéseket, gyárunkban is elindítottunk egy szén-dioxid kibocsátás-csökkentési projektet. A cél az, hogy minél előbb elérjük azt a 20%-os csökkentést, amit 2020-ig irányoztunk elő magunknak. Ezt a kitűzött célt az uniós és hazai jogszabályoknak való megfeleléssel, illetve a gyáron belüli csökkentési lehetőségek felkutatásával és bevezetésével kívánjuk elérni.

A Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Kft. területén jelenleg összesen 35 emissziós pontforrás található. A fényező üzem pontforrásain folyamatos emisszió mérés történik. A közvetlen kibocsátások mellett, gyárunk közvetlen környezetében rendszeres levegőminőségi (immissziós) méréseket is végzünk. Cégünk közvetlen és közvetett kibocsátásának rendszeres megfigyelése során eddig semmilyen hatósági határérték-túllépés nem történt.

Cégünk szennyvízkibocsátását a keletkezésének helye szerint, technológiai és szociális szennyvízre bonthatjuk. A szociális helyiségekben keletkező szennyvíz a kommunális tisztítóba kerül, míg a technológiai szennyvizet a csatornarendszerbe jutása előtt a gyáron belül tisztítjuk és folyamatosan ellenőrizzük.

A csapadékvíz gyárunk teljes területén külön esővíz-hálózatba folyik össze, majd végül a csapadékvíz-medencékben tároljuk azt.

Társadalmi felelősségvállalás

Magyarországon, 2011-ben szervezték meg az első TeSzedd! Önkéntes hulladékgyűjtési napot, amelynek célja, hogy felhívja a lakosság figyelmét a környezetvédelem és a természeti értékek megóvásának fontosságára. 2013-ban és 2014-ben is részt vettünk az akcióban a Kiskunsági Nemzeti Parkkal együttműködve, melynek keretében egy a gyárunk közelében fekvő védett természeti területet tisztítottunk meg a gazdátlan hulladékoktól.