Virginia Tech Researchers Deploy EnerNOC's Energy Management Applications In "Lean" Manufacturing Study

BOSTON, Dec. 16, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EnerNOC, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENOC), a leading provider of energy management applications for the smart grid, announced today that it is partnering with a Virginia Tech research group to monitor energy usage data across multiple sites in an innovative study of "lean" manufacturing strategies. The Wood Innovation Research Group will use EnerNOC's web-based energy management applications to gather energy usage data from three Virginia wood product manufacturers and analyze trends in energy usage to identify opportunities for improved efficiency. Merrillat, Ten Oaks Flooring Company, and Morgan Lumber will contribute data to the project.

Uniquely, this project explores integrating energy efficiency into "lean" manufacturing techniques, which are followed by leading manufacturers world-wide. Traditionally, lean thinking has been focused on reducing seven forms of waste, including transport, inventory, and defects, among others. This application of EnerNOC's technology aims to reveal how manufacturers can identify waste in energy use and minimize its impact on the manufacturing process.

"Since many manufacturing facilities are extremely complex, even 'lean' manufacturers tend to miss the resources they waste through inefficient energy use," said Dr. Henry Quesada-Pineda, Assistant Professor of Business & Manufacturing Processes at Virginia Tech, who will lead the research project. "To advise these manufacturers, our research group required a robust data processing and analysis platform to identify wasteful energy usage across an array of sites. EnerNOC's energy profiling functionality allows us to see the broader energy-use picture, as well as drill down into facility-specific usage data to inform our project."

"For many businesses, energy is an 'unseen' form of waste. The results are only clear after the bill arrives each month," said Gregg Dixon, EnerNOC's Senior Vice President of Marketing. "EnerNOC's data-driven energy efficiency applications are designed to be flexible and extensible enough to serve all kinds of commercial, institutional, and industrial businesses, as well as to support the research that will move the field of energy efficiency forward."