Customers Case Studies

Background
DTE Energy is a leading energy and energy technology provider. It sells electricity, natural gas, coal, landfill gas, steam and chilled water, develops merchant power and industrial energy projects and is a growing leader in energy trading.

The company is one of the nation's larger purchasers, transporters and marketers of coal and develops and invests in emerging energy technologies, such as distributed generation. It also works to become the pre-eminent supplier of integrated distributed generation solutions.

DTE Energy's subsidiary, Detroit Edison, is the nation's seventh largest electric utility, supplying energy to 2.1 million customers in Southeastern Michigan. Another utility subsidiary, MichCon, is the nation's 10th largest natural gas local distribution company. It serves 1.2 million customers across Michigan.

Challenges
DTE prides itself on being a premier, full-service energy and energy technology company meeting the needs of 21st century customers. It operates as a fast-paced, progressive, high-performance and value-based organization with the first element in the company's vision being meeting compliance with environmental laws and regulations and even surpassing requirements where economically practicable and beneficial.

At DTE, safety and health is a core value. "We're approaching 13,000 chemicals in our inventory," said Terence (Terry) Civic, Manager, Corporate Safety & Industrial Hygiene. "We're probably going to top out at 15,000. Managing that size of inventory can be a very arduous task."

With the protection of 10,000 employees across 100 facilities at stake, DTE takes safety seriously. "The problem was that we didn't know what our inventory really looked like before using 3E," said Civic.

DTE did the best it could to stay in compliance and make information readily available to employees with its own system. Coordinating thousands of Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) cost the utility company time and money in the form of manpower to enter and update their database and IT costs associated with maintaining an in-house system.

To increase its level of compliance, and to provide employees with the information needed in the event of an industrial incident, Civic and DTE concluded that a more systematic process for managing MSDS information had to be put in place.

Solution
Civic and DTE turned to 3E Company for EH&S outsourcing relief. Now the utility uses 3E Online-MSDS and MSDS On Demand services, as well as 3E Poison and Exposure and 3E Spill Hotlines.

3E provides the peace of mind of complete MSDS coverage. "Now if it's not in the database or somehow slipped through, it's only a phone call away. And, on rare occasions, if 3E doesn't have the MSDS in their database, they go directly to the manufacturer and obtain it, said Civic.

Results
3E's services provide significant improvement of the quality of DTE's EH&S compliance program, along with built-in cost savings.
Working with 3E strengthens and reinforces DTE's other core values of respect, integrity, learning, customer service and business success. DTE safety professionals now concentrate on creating a safer work environment for employees, consumers and communities instead of focusing time and energy on building and maintaining MSDS compliance.

Location:  Detroit, MI
3E Services: 3E Online-MSDS, 3E MSDS On Demand, 3E Poison & Exposure, 3E Spill
Industry/Market: Utility
Company Web Site:  http://www.dteenergy.com