LEED Designed Factories

The recent announcement of VW that their newest Passat factory in Chattanooga is Platinum LEED certified got us wondering...Are there any other LEED factories?  This is what we found:

There is the famous Ford River Rouge plant designed by William McDonough and Partners. Read about it at their website.

Steelcase has one for manufacturing their wood furniture. Read about it in Architecture Week

Here is a factory in China with Gold certification. They are a supply for power equipment, so it is a good sign that they are thinking about efficiency. Read about it in the trade publication Electrical Portal

P&G commits to building their next Chinese factory with LEED certification and pledges that all new factories will be LEED certified. Furthermore, P&G announced that it will:

• Power its plants with 100 percent renewable energy
• Use 100 percent renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging
• Send zero consumer and manufacturing waste go to landfills
• Designing products "that delight consumers while maximizing the conservation of resources."

Read about P&G's plans at GreenBiz.com

Read more about the VW LEED factory at Reuters.com

Do you know of any others LEED or energy efficient factories? Post them in the comments.

Is manufacturing moving back to North America?

Rapid manufacturing proves to be a compelling reason to bring manufacturing to the US /Mexico border.

Meyers says being just south of the U.S. border gives his company an advantage in the fiercely competitive global market. His firm gets access to a low-wage workforce in Mexico, yet it can still deliver products rapidly to their customers in the United States. His company's lead-time is just seven days, he says.

"You're not going to get something from China in seven days unless you put it on an airplane," Meyers says. "Here, we put it on a truck, and it's in. We take an order, we custom build it, we ship it out, and it's out quickly."

By being close to its market, INFASA has also eliminated warehousing costs. The products leave the loading dock in Reynosa, clear customs a few miles away at the border, then are immediately shipped to the client.

If a customer needs a product quickly, Meyer's team can build it, move it across to McAllen and have it on a FedEx flight within 24 hours. Myers says this is a service that manufacturers in Asia simply can't offer.

Business leaders on both sides of the border say this is a model for how the region can revive manufacturing in North America.

Read more about it at NPR