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Industrial site visit report

Diageo
Diageo is one of the world’s leading companies in production of alcoholic beverages. They
have production facilities in more than 30 countries around the world. Their diverse brand selection
ranges from iconic drought Guinness or Johnnie Walker whiskey all the way to brands like Smirnoff or
Captain Morgan. Diageo as a company focuses on responsibility which comes in many shapes and
forms. Forms like health and safety conditions in a workplace and employee satisfaction as they rank
in top 20 world’s best companies to work for. Because of alcohols impact on society, commitment to
reduce harm caused by alcohol consumption is also part of their responsibility agenda and they are
involved in several programs and initiatives battling the misuse of alcohol. As a multinational company
they are heavily invested in improving and perfecting manufacturing processes while understanding
and acknowledging the value of tradition. As a part of our course we have visited two sites of Diageo
a whiskey barrel filling station and a copper workshop in witch stills for whiskey are made. In this
section we will examine and compare their theory, or their PR presentation, with practice at these
two sites.
The filling station facility is part of a large warehouse complex so that the filled barrels can be
stored right away. The size of the place is enormous with hundreds of millions litters of whiskey stored
in the warehouses. The filling station fills around 40 million litters worth of barrels annually. The whole
filling operation is situated in a big and spacious hall. Empty barrels are being manually offloaded form
trucks. Big metal cage makes sure that any falling barrels from the trucks will not bounce and roll of
too far creating a danger. The barrels are then mounted on a different conveyer belts according to
size and type of alcohol that was stored in them before. The belt then moves the barrel on the other
side of the hall where they are being filled six at a time, 2 minutes and 20 second being the standard
time to fill the six barrels. A team of operators are overseeing the process. The filling hoses are fitted
with suction element so that fumes from the spirit would not escape into the hall’s atmosphere and
make the operators go home tipsy after the shift. After the barrels are filled they are moved via the
conveyer belt to where they are offloaded of the belts and loaded on vehicles that will deliver them
into a specific warehouse for storage. Each barrel is fitted with a barcode with information about the
type of the spirit date when it was brewed, filled etc. this makes sure that the process is well
monitored. The whole filling process is done with focus on safety. The operators all wear standard
protective equipment and several safety preclusions are installed in the hall as it was described above.
The storage of the barrels at Diageo is undergoing an upgrade right know. Up until recent the
barrels were being but onto racks in the warehouses. These rack are fixed sizes and allow the barrels
to be extracted from the rack if necessary. The company is however applying new way of storage. They
are storing the barrels onto palettes which can be then stored in the warehouses on top of each other
in columns of eight where before the racks could store only six barrels on top of each other. This is a
significant increase of the sites storage capacity.
The second Diageo’s site we have visited was a copper workshop where stills for whiskey
distilleries are being manufactured. Working with metal can be potentially very dangerous and
hazardous, that is why the manager of the workshop had left nothing to chance. Diageo allow the
main manager of the workshop to spend a substantial amount of money on safety equipment and
employee training making the health and safety standard very high. If new potential hazard working
in the workshop arises it is immediately addresses and eliminated in the best way possible. When
working the copper many different processes are used some of which are very loud. The workshop is
located in a populated are of Alloa and because of this it is well soundproofed. Also within the
workshop there are sound reducing partitions to protect workers on site. All the workshops employees
are fitted with special earplugs that have been made to perfectly fit the shape of ear of a specific
employee. When hammering the copper into the right shape high vibration are hazard for the

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operators in a long run. That is why the company invested into expensive hydraulic equipment to
eliminate this hazard. The amount of safety in the workshop is definitely impressive.
The technologies of distilling whiskey are moving forward and with it the material used to
make the still from. Meaning that some parts are being made from different materials than the
traditional copper. To preserve the tradition the workshop makes these specific parts with copper
coating on the outside just to preserve the esthetical value of the stills while moving onward in the
manufacturing technologies.
When Diageo say that they are creating a safe working environment on their website they are
stating the truth. Especially when considering the two sites that we have visited. It was sure that they
do go beyond what is required by the law and really care about the welfare of their employees. From
talking to the managers and staff that were showing us the sites it was also obvious that the company
is very open to new ideas and new ways of doing stuff. The motivation and drive to improve on working
conditions as well as perfecting the manufacturing processes is very present in the company’s
interaction with its employees.

George Square Energy Centre

Our second visit was to George
Square Energy Centre which is part of
universities energy program. The
program consists of four combined heat
and energy units with combined output
of over 6MWe. These units provide 80%
of the universities power requirements.
The big focus point of the power scheme
is on efficiency and business viability.
Combined power and heat
technology is all about efficiency. The
conventional method of energy
production and distribution is to
generate heat and power separate
having the power station far away from
the city and the boilers in various sizes
providing heat for a building of a Figure 1, Efficiencies of CHP and separate heat and
complex of buildings. Power generation, power generation
especially when using fossil fuels for the
generation, creates large amount of heat that is usually wasted and released into the atmosphere.
Figure 1 shows the energy losses in separate generation of heat and power. For these two processes
the combined losses are around 45% meaning that almost half of the fuels potential is being wasted.
When the two processes are combined into one unit the efficiency rises significantly. The combined
heat and power unit burns fossil fuel, usually natural gas as it is easier to on smaller scale then coal
which needs to be grinded before burning, to generate electricity. The heat generated in this process
in then captured to heat water in boilers situated right next to the generator. Hot water from the
boiler can then be used to heat building in the vicinity of the CHP unit. As seen in figure 1 the efficiency
of CHP unit is around 80% which is significant difference from 56% efficiency of separate generation.
Because of the higher efficiency of the CHP unit less fuel is needed to provide the same energy and
heat meaning that the CO2 emissions of the CHP are reduced. University of Edinburgh’s CHP program
saves around 8,500 tons of CO2 annually. Having your power generation of the premises of the
university also ensures that the university know where the power is coming from. The Program
consists of four CHP units at four different locations: George square (1.6MWe), Holyrood (1.4MWe),
King Buildings (2.7MWe) and Pollock halls (526kWe). The overall energy output is 6.2MWe which

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represents 80% of the universities energy

requirements. The whole project cost 12
million pounds which has already been
payed of. Annually the university saves
1.5 million pound on gas.
George Square Energy Centre
provides heat and power for all of the
central campus. It is located in the space
of former boiler room. The 125 letter gas
engine with power of 1.6MWe is situated
on the ground floor of the building and it
is concealed in a sound proofing partition
so that the noise form it would not spread
to the surroundings. The boilers are
located downstairs in the underground
Figure 2, 125 letter gas engine at George Square
form where the hot water is being
Energy Centre
pumped all around the central campus.
This units is completely self-governing
which means that no staff is needed to be present for normal operation of the unit. If something goes
wrong one of the facilities many sensors, of various kinds, will automatically shut down the fuel feed
and alert the staff and if necessary the fire brigade. Because the units are self-operated the cost
efficiency of the program is even higher.

Conclusion
Even though Diageo and the George Square Energy Centre are very different businesses in
both scale and product they share values and views on how to conduct business. For both of them
the saying: Safety at work is more important than the work itself, is somewhat true. In Diageo’s case
the focus on safety and responsibility form the side of employer is big and the company is doing its
best to provide safe working environment for their employees. In the case of George Square Energy
Centre it is not so obvious but the facility is equipped with lot of preclusions to prevent any danger
to mostly surrounding buildings as there are no people working on site. Diageo is very invested in
improving the manufacturing processes, like the new way of barrel storage, to increase the
efficiency of its facilities. The universities energy program is all about efficiency and that is the
reason why university made this large investment into building these CHP units, to increase the
energy efficiency of its campuses. In one way the differ though, In Diageo the process of innovation
and improvement is constant and continues whether in the universities CHP project was more of a
onetime improvement. The units are well established and the processes do not change at they
operate at the highest possible efficiency possible at this time in the history.

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References

The Association for Decentralised Energy web site:

http://www.theade.co.uk/what-is-combined-heat-and-power_15.html

The University of Edinburgh CHP case study:

https://www.learn.ed.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1705721-dt-content-rid-
3164456_1/courses/SCEE090012015-6SV1YR/UoE%20CHP-DH%20Case%20Study.pdf

Diageo official website:

http://www.diageo.com/en-row/Pages/default.aspx