60    POLLUTION PREVENTION AND WASTE
MINIMIZATION: DANA'S WAY
John Clark
Dana Corporation
2100 West State Street
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46801
Dana Corporation, a Fortune 200 Company, supplies components to the automotive industry.
The Columbia City, Indiana, Brake Products Plant activities are the basis of this presentation.
This facility has completed an aggressive minimization and pollution prevention program over
the last six years.
In 1990, senior management of Dana Corporation from the Weatherhead Division assigned a
three-person task force to evaluate the eight plants, their processes and environmental practices.
The assignment was to eliminate or minimize the cost and liability of the manufacturing
processes as it pertains to environmental issues. The assignment also included reviewing the facilities to assure that the community and the worker were existing in a safe environment. The
personnel assigned to this task force were the personnel responsible for facility engineering, environmental compliance, and capital planning for the three largest facilities. This cross-functional team allowed a review of all plants by personnel with strong experience in operations, environmental, and manufacturing. The team visited each site and evaluated the processes and
practices being used, the wastes being generated, and the disposal activities of the wastes. The
team then produced a recommended five year plan that include process changes, new capital
equipment with projected costs and savings, and corrective action plans for issues in which no
process change was recommended. This plan was presented to the entire Weatherhead Division
Staff, including the Division General Manager, Controller, Engineering Manager, and all Plant
Managers. The plan was reviewed by the Division Staff and implemented June of 1991.
The responsibility for implementing the plan fell back to the task force personnel and their
counterparts at the individual plants. They had authority to plan the changes, budget them into
the capital plan, and between themselves and the Plant Managers, monitor and report to the Division Staff on the status of the plan. The Columbia City Brake Plant began implementation of the
plan in mid-1990 and completed it in 1996. The following are the actions taken by this facility
under this plan.
At the beginning of the plan the facility maintained seven trichloroethylene vapor degreasers,
utilized methyl ethyl ketone as a thinner for a painting operation, used anhydrous ammonia in a
blueprint machine, and reclaimed only 70% of the oil trapped in the metal turnings.
The first process change was a modification to the paint operation that utilized methyl ethyl
ketone (MEK) as a thinner and drying aid. This operation was very simple; it required placing a
paint stripe around a hose at a set distance from the end of the hose as an assembly guide. The
hose was rolled through a device where it contacted a spinning wheel which was coated with
paint. This coated wheel placed a l/16"-wide stripe on the circumference of the hose. Testing
was conducted to modify this process; it was determined that a standard water-based paint would
not dry properly and caused the stripe to smear, making the stripe ineffective as an assembly
guide. Working with the local Sherwin Williams paint distributor, a special mixture of a water-
based latex paint was produced. This mixture, combined with an infrared heat source on the discharge chute of the striping machine, corrected the drying issue, allowing the process change.
This change allowed the facility to eliminate 5,700 lb of MEK air emissions, as well as disposal of 880 lb of hazardous waste per year.
52nd Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings. 1997, Ann Arbor Press. Chelsea, Michigan 48118. Printed in
U.S.A.
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