Cleaner Production Internship Program:
a unique strategy to stimulate RD&E projects in Thailand

 

Chantana Yuvaniyama*, Thumrongrut Mungcharoen, Peeraporn Palapleevalya

and Yuwanan Santitaweeroek

National Science and Technology Development Agency

73/1 Rama VI Rd, Rajdhevee, Bangkok 10400, Thailand

chantana@nstda.or.th

 

 

Abstract

The Cleaner Production Internship Program (CPIP) has received great attention from both public and private organizations in Thailand since its first launch in 1997.  The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) became the major organizer of the CPIP in 1998.  The program has given impressive results for the development of Cleaner Production (CP)-skilled people in academia and industries.  Furthermore, it has created linkages among academic institutions, NSTDA, and industries for future co-operations in research, development, and engineering (RD&E) in CP.  The 1998 CPIP report was presented at the 2^nd Asia Pacific CP Roundtable last year.

This article describes an improved strategy of the CPIP in 1999, the 2^nd year of the CPIP organized and supported by NSTDA, that led to the success of both human resource development and RD&E projects in CP.  The key factors of this new strategy consist of:

·        Clear program guidelines enhanced the CPIP participants’ understanding of roles and the program commitments.

·        Teamwork-oriented scheme strengthened relationships among three groups of participants –interns, mentors, and industries– leading to fruitful results.

·        Careful academy-industry matching emphasized on the factors of expertise, interests, and industrial problems.

·        Concise CP training curriculum concentrated on the CP assessment and applications.

The outcomes of the 1999 CPIP are remarkable particularly in the co-operative RD&E in CP among the three parties.  The program generated four RD&E projects and other four concept papers, which respond directly to the needs of Thai industries.  In addition, it produced 35 CP-competent people from five academic institutions and eight industries, most of which are still considerably active and proficient in the field of CP.  Moreover, more than thirty CP options proposed to the industries were estimated to save US$115,000 yearly besides considerable environmental and health benefits.  Most of these options required low investment and had a payback period of within one year.

key words

Cleaner Production, Internship Program, Thailand, Research and Development, Industry and university cooperation

 

INTRODUCTION

Most Thai industries are small or medium enterprises with limited resources to invest on technology transfer.  Although promotion of Cleaner Production (CP) in Thailand has raised some awareness from various industries, without proper guidance and risk assessment, they are usually reluctant to implement it.  To successfully promote the CP implementation in Thai industries, one must focus on many factors and provide continuous supports for its sustainability.  The most important issue among these is local capacity building in relevant technical areas to reduce barriers arisen from cost and knowledge gap in technology transfer and ultimately to develop local appropriate technology.  This paper describes a proven strategy of pooling and strengthening resources from local academia and linking them with industrial needs in order to encourage long-term CP implementation and stimulate its research, development, and engineering (RD&E) in Thailand.

 

Cleaner production internship Program (CPIP)

The CP Internship Program (CPIP) was first introduced in November 1996 through the International Pollution Prevention Partnership (IP3) project initiated by a grant from United States-Asia Environmental Partnership Program (US-AEP).  IP3 is a partnership between the University of New Hampshire (UNH), the NH Pollution Prevention Partnership and several universities, industries and agencies in Thailand including the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA).  It started an internship program in 1997 to promote CP concepts and implementations.  The program trained forty students in CP principles and applications and raised awareness among Thai academia and industries.

Following the successful launch of the 1997 program, NSTDA became the major organizer of the 1998 CPIP.  The program was designed to cover more industrial sectors and to emphasize co-operative CP RD&E between academia and industries.  It has given impressive results for the development of more than ninety CP-skilled people in academia and industries.  Furthermore, it has created linkages among academic institutions, NSTDA, and industries for future co-operations in CP RD&E.  The 1998 CPIP paper was presented at the 2^nd Asia Pacific CP Roundtable in Australia [1].

The 1999 CPIP, the 2nd year of the CPIP organized and supported by NSTDA, was further developed from the 1998 model but emphasized more on generation of applicable RD&E projects in CP besides human resource development.

 

The 1999 CPIP

The 1999 CPIP comprised many activities similar to the 1998 program.  It still consisted of two major activities i.e. a CP training and a CP internship.  The program activities can be summarized in Table 1.  However, there were some improvements leading to the success of creating RD&E projects as well as human resource development.  These can be described as the following key factors:

·        Clear program guidelines enhanced the CPIP participants’ understanding of roles and the program commitments.  The guidelines also included some useful instructions for writing required reports such as CP internship project proposal, and relevant examples, which facilitated the interns and their mentors to produce quality reports in short time.  These guidelines were distributed as a handbook [2] to every participant prior to the internship period.

·        Teamwork-oriented scheme strengthened relationships among three groups of participants –interns, mentors, and industries– leading to fruitful results.  Since CP involves multi-disciplinary areas and functions especially in a work place practice, teamwork becomes one of the most important factors for success.  It was therefore emphasized in the 1999 CPIP in many ways.  For examples, several meetings were organized for all of the mentors and factory coordinators in order to discuss and exchange ideas for solving technical problems together.  Plant visits to participated factories were added to the program.  Each visit was arranged to include a group of mentors, instead of just the one who was responsible for that factory.  The group was voluntarily formed by teaming of invited mentors with same interests but different expertise.  This kind of teamwork resulted in a pool of knowledge and strengthened relationships among mentors from different institutions as well as among mentors and factory coordinators.

·        Careful academy-industry matching emphasized on the factors of expertise, interests, and industrial problems.  Eight factories were recruited through program advertisement and by voluntarily applications.  Prospective mentors were carefully identified afterwards by considering their expertise that fit problems of the factories, their interest for RD&E projects, and their commitment to the program.  The mentors were then asked to find their own students to promote good relationship between mentors and their interns.  In addition, a meeting between these groups of participants was organized prior to the internship period to ensure appropriate matching and their satisfaction in working together.

·        Concise CP training curriculum concentrated on the CP assessment and applications.  The details of the curriculum are described below.

 

The Program Participants

Participants in the program could be classified into three groups:

·         Interns – Totally 19 junior and senior undergraduate students majoring in science or engineering.

·         Intern’s mentors – Eight researchers from universities or academic institutions interested or involved in RD&E projects in CP.

·         Factory coordinators – Eight industrial representatives from production departments of participating companies were in charge of coordinating with interns and their mentors during the internship period.  The companies located in Bangkok and nearby provinces are small and medium factories from five industrial sectors– food, electroplating, textile, plastic, and household products.

A list of participating academic institutions is shown in Table 2.

 

The Intensive Training on CP Audit

A comprehensive three-and-a-half-day training session [3] was organized for only the program participants unlike the 1998 program that was opened for other interested students.  This change allowed closer interactions between speakers and participants.  The period was also shorter than the 1998 training to enhance full participation of the mentors and the factory coordinators.  The training curriculum concentrated on the CP assessment and applications and covered the following important topics:

 

-          Overview of Environmental Management System and CP Concept                1.5     hr.

-          CP Audit                                                                                                            2.5     hr.

-          Workshop #1: Process Study & Material Balance                                            1.5     hr.

-          CP Audit and Feasibility Study                                                                             1     hr.

-          Workshop #2: Finding CP options                                                                       1     hr.

-          CP Implementation and Workshop #3                                                                 1     hr.

-          Case Study: CP Experience of Thai Pure Drinks Ltd.                                         1     hr.

-          Energy Audit: Thermal and Electrical Energy Audit                                             3     hr.

-          CP Information and Resources                                                                           1     hr.

-          Case Study: Mentor's Experience in the 1998 Internship Program                     1     hr.

-          Case Study: Interns' Experience in the 1998 Internship Program                       1     hr.

-          Summary of program-guidelines for the 1999 Internship Program                     1     hr.

All of the training sessions except the topic of “Searching CP Information” were conducted in Thai by invited speakers from academia, government and non-government institutions, as well as industries.  This eliminated the language barrier of some students.  The training not only enabled the participants to have a better understanding of CP and its implementation, but also helped them get acquainted to one another and work together as team players.  Furthermore, the experiences of the previous-year participants as well as the clarification of the 1999 program guidelines provided a clear picture of how the program and the whole process would proceed for everyone.

 

The Eight-Week CP Internship

Following the CP training described above, the interns were placed in a group of two or three at each participating factory.  These interns helped the industries in implementing the CP plans under supervision of their assigned mentors and factory coordinators.  During the internship period, each of the mentors was assigned to closely supervise, in cooperation with the factory coordinator, the interns at only one factory instead of two as implemented in the previous year.  This change allowed the mentors to maximize their time for optimal results at the assigned factory.

The 1999 CP internship period which lasted for about eight weeks in the Summer consisted of three phases:

·         Internship phase 1: Interns conducted CP pre-assessment to identify CP project proposals, and prepared for presentations.

·         Internship phase 2: CP assessment began, including data collection and analysis.  Plant visits by groups of mentors were arranged during this phase with one formal visit per factory.

·         Internship phase 3: Interns concluded their work and prepared their final reports and presentations, while their mentors prepared RD&E concept papers and presentations.

 

ACHIEVEMENTS

The outcomes of the 1999 CPIP were remarkable particularly in the co-operative RD&E in CP among the three parties.  The program generated four RD&E projects and other four concept papers, which responded directly to the needs of Thai industries.  These CP RD&E projects were funded by NSTDA and undertaken or led by the teams of mentors with in-kind cooperation from the industries participating in the CPIP.  They were small or medium projects with 1-2 year duration and a budget of not more than 500,000 Baht (~US$ 12,500) each according to criteria in a handbook entitled “Guidelines for Writing RD&E Projects on Cleaner Production for NSTDA Funding” [4].  A list of these projects and the concept papers is shown in Table 3.

The program has produced 35 CP-competent people from five academic institutions and eight industries, most of which are still considerably active and proficient in the field of CP.   For examples, all of the mentors have registered to be members of “Cleaner Production Research and Education Consortium”, which is established and coordinated by NSTDA, and actively contributed to many NSTDA CP activities such as “Development of Train the Trainer Curriculums on CP Audit and Applications”.  Most of the factories are still implementing CP in their production, and some of them have even offered jobs for interns to continue the work after the end of the program.  Moreover, 50% of the mentors and 25% of the factories have shown interest in joining the program again and decided to participate in the 2000 CPIP.

In addition, more than 30 CP options were proposed to the industries and were estimated to save US$115,000 annually besides considerable environmental and health benefits.  Most options required low investment and had a payback period of within one year.  Examples of the detailed options are shown in Table 4.

 

ACknowledgeMENT

 

The authors would like to express our sincere thanks to all of the 1999 CPIP participants for their cooperation and dedication.  Our gratitude also goes to Thailand Environment Institute, the Industrial Environment Institute under the Federation of Thai Industries, and the Faculty of Engineering at Kasetsart University for their consistent supports to the program especially during the intensive training on CP audit.

 

REFERENCE

[1]     Yuvaniyama, C, Shiowatana, J., Santitaweeroek, Y., Mungcharoen, T., Limpaseni W., Farag, I.H. (1999). The 1998 Cleaner Production Internship Program in Thailand.  Global Competitiveness through Cleaner Production. J.A. Scott and R.J. Pagan (ed.), Australian Cleaner Production Association Inc., Australia, pp.219-225.

[2]     Environmental Science and Technology Program, National Science and Technology Development Agency (1999). Guidelines for the 1999 Cleaner Production Internship Program. Thailand, 30 pages.

[3]     Environmental Science and Technology Program, National Science and Technology Development Agency (1999).  Training Workshop for participants in the 1999 CPIP on CP Audit. Thailand, 133 pages.

[4]     The Energy and Cleaner Technology Program, National Science and Technology Development Agency (1998).  Guidelines for Writing RD&E Projects on Cleaner Production for NSTDA Funding. Thailand, 8 pages.

 

Table 1: The 1999 CPIP Activities

Period	Event
Feb 9, 1999 (1 day) Mar 18–23, 1999 (3.5 days) Mar 29 – Apr 7, 1999 Apr 10, 1999 Apr 12 – May 5, 1999 May 8, 1999 May 9–21, 1999 May 29, 1999	First meeting for mentors and factory coordinators Opening Ceremony of the Internship Program  and Training on CP Audit Internship Phase 1 CP Project Proposal Presentations Internship Phase 2 Project Progress Presentations Internship Phase 3 Presentations of Intern’s Final Reports and Mentor’s Concept Papers  and  Closing Ceremony

 

Table 2: List of academic institutions in the 1999 CPIP

 

Table 3: List of RD&E projects and concept papers from the 1999 CPIP

 

 

Table 4: Examples of CP options for participating factories in the 1999 CPIP