Environmental management systems implementation

All organisations make some contribution to the degradation of the environment through their use of resources and production of waste. Environmental management systems (EMS) standards can provide a tool for companies to systematically reduce their environmental impacts. ISO 14001 was published in 1996. This fitted in with plans of the case study company to take proactive action in this area, even though there was no legislative requirement for them to do so. As EMS implementation was a new area at the time, appropriate methodologies were developed to address different aspects of the implementation, and ISO 14001 was successfully implemented in the company. The results of the primary research included: ♦ Drawing up a methodology for identifying and interpreting the environmental legislation that may have an impact on the organisation and compiling a register of such regulations. ♦ Developing a robust methodology for assessing significant environmental aspects and impacts and applying this to the software company. ♦ Establishing objectives and targets for those aspects identified as significant and implementing environmental management programmes to meet these. ♦ Developing an internal environmental audit procedure based on auditing against the significant aspects. ♦ Integrating areas of the EMS with the existing quality management system in order to avoid duplication of effort. ♦ Undergoing an external assessment process in order to achieve certification of the system. The thesis concludes that the systematic approach defined in ISO 14001 provided a mechanism that the organisation was able to adopt to bring about improvement in its environmental performance. The system was based on a thorough evaluation of the organisation's significant environmental aspects in order to bring about a reduction in its negative impacts. The ISO 14001 requirement for continual improvement is the key driver of the system, and this is what differentiates it from ISO 9000.

Development of a data acquisition system to characterise sustainable energy technologies and to support Web-Based learning (DAQ-WBL)

Driven by concerns about rising energy costs, security of supply and climate change a new wave of Sustainable Energy Technologies (SET’s) have been embraced by the Irish consumer. Such systems as solar collectors, heat pumps and biomass boilers have become common due to government backed financial incentives and revisions of the building regulations. However, there is a deficit of knowledge and understanding of how these technologies operate and perform under Ireland’s maritime climate. This AQ-WBL project was designed to address both these needs by developing a Data Acquisition (DAQ) system to monitor the performance of such technologies and a web-based learning environment to disseminate performance characteristics and supplementary information about these systems. A DAQ system consisting of 108 sensors was developed as part of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology’s (GMIT’s) Centre for the Integration of Sustainable EnergyTechnologies (CiSET) in an effort to benchmark the performance of solar thermal collectors and Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP’s) under Irish maritime climate, research new methods of integrating these systems within the built environment and raise awareness of SET’s. It has operated reliably for over 2 years and has acquired over 25 million data points. Raising awareness of these SET’s is carried out through the dissemination of the performance data through an online learning environment. A learning environment was created to provide different user groups with a basic understanding of a SET’s with the support of performance data, through a novel 5 step learning process and two examples were developed for the solar thermal collectors and the weather station which can be viewed at http://www.kdp 1 .aquaculture.ie/index.aspx. This online learning environment has been demonstrated to and well received by different groups of GMIT’s undergraduate students and plans have been made to develop it further to support education, awareness, research and regional development.

Development of a life cycle management system for remote products.

The research described in this thesis has been developed as a part of the Reliability and Field Data Management for Multi-Component Products (REFIDAM) Project. This project was funded under the Applied Research Grants Scheme administered by Enterprise Ireland. The project was a partnership between Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and an industrial company, Thermo King Europe. The project aimed to develop a system to manage the information required for maintenance costing, cost of ownership, reliability assessment and improvement of multi-component products, by establishing information flows between the customer network and across the Thermo King organisation.

Implementation of a customer relationship management system in an SME

The research conducted for this thesis has been carried out over a two year period as part of the Mobile Tools and Technology for customer care (MOTTO) project. The project was funded under the Applied Grant scheme administered by Enterprise Ireland and Nortel Networks Ltd. It was a partnership project between Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, University of Limerick, National University of Ireland Galway, and a global Internet and communications company, Nortel Networks. The project aimed to investigate the enabling mobile communications technologies in e-Business and mobile communications in the area of Business-to-Business (B2B) customer care. The development of the application discussed in this thesis was developed in conjunction with the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, University of Limerick and AMT Ireland. The decision to develop the application in the Electronics Company of AMT in Limerick came about as a result of the contact established by Mark Southern from the University of Limerick. Mark was involved in overseeing the development and assisted in establishing the user requirements.