Tech Briefs Magazine - January 2024 - 17

Sustainable Manufacturing
Re-Imagining Production
Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries
A
s the world struggles to reduce carbon emissions and
other environmental impacts, it is increasingly clear that
goods production must become more sustainable. Given
that manufacturing is responsible for 37 percent of global energy
consumption, industry is feeling the pressure to address
the challenge and there are a few key trends that are accelerating
the push to become more sustainable.
Net-zero commitments are forcing businesses to transform
their production processes to deliver significant carbon emission
reductions. Evolving customer expectations add pressure
from the demand side for products with minimal environmental
impact. Capital is flowing more readily toward companies
employing sustainability goals. And resource scarcity is fueling
the transition to circular economies. But this shift also offers a
big incentive, as sustainable production is a catalyst for business
innovation and growth.
For sustainable production to be a worthwhile investment, it
must be put at the heart of the business and address sustainability
from all angles. Sustainability improvements suffuse every
decision, process, and system making it nearly impossible to
create a sustainable business with a bolt-on solution. A business
needs to be thinking about how it can create sustainable outcomes
from the beginning, visualizing the needed data to make
the most informed decisions. While most improvements will
fall into these five categories, each business will create a custom
solution fitting their requirements:
* Decarbonization: reducing CO2 emissions, internally and externally
*
Energy efficiency: using less energy for the same outcome
* Resource efficiency: optimizing use and re-use of inputs while
reducing waste
* Circularity: leveraging new materials and methods while extending
equipment repairability and upgradeability
* People-centricity: building a culture of empowerment, health,
and safety.
Innovation, flexibility, and adaptability will be required to
drive these categories and to be competitive in future markets.
These requirements will invariably overlap in nearly every manufacturing
process. Understanding how and when they do will
be a key enabler for sustainable manufacturing.
Embedding sustainability into every stage of operations will
be critical in accurately reflecting the possible changes needed
for sustainable production and it starts at the beginning.
When defining a production strategy, manufacturers need to
incorporate cost, schedule, requirements, and sustainability. Line,
process, and plant design should be based on holistic sustainability
KPIs that are balanced with profitability. Production planning
needs to extend from raw materials to end-of-life for an accurate
reflection of the KPIs. During operation, production and plant
monitoring will provide the deep insights on performance and
enable real-time adaptation to meet sustainability targets.
Making these goals and recommendations a reality requires
the Digital Enterprise - to seamlessly integrate and digitalize
the entire production value chain. Harnessing the power of data
for sustainable production relies on combing the real and digital
Tech Briefs, January 2024
worlds across the value chain, such that intelligent predictions
can be made reliably. The comprehensive digital twin provides
the collected knowledge from simulations, production data, carbon
footprint information, and more for actionable decisions.
When industrial manufacturers invest in digitalization and automation
to become a sustainable Digital Enterprise, they can achieve
a wide range of important outcomes. With systems in place to collect,
analyze, and act on production data - real and digital - a
business can analyze their entire operation in the digital twin for
different sustainability scenarios. That leads to a more complete
understanding and risk mitigation in production by identifying
when and where emissions occur across the supply chain.
Businesses can also use the digital twin to achieve huge energy
savings with digitalized drive systems and enterprise-wide
energy management - reducing energy costs and the associated
emissions today. The same can be said for more tangible
resources. Water and raw material use can be minimized
throughout production by understanding process dynamics
more clearly while planning around the unavoidable and expected
waste. A global manufacturer may need to understand,
plan, and optimize logistics and warehouse operations to minimize
their environmental impact.
Into the future, manufacturers will be able to implement digital
workflows and training to ensure proper safety in a facility.
Teaching new processes and safety procedures will be critical as
businesses consider new materials and incorporate new production
methods in their sustainability goals.
Our goal is to continue adapting our existing tools to make
sustainability a primary decision driver across the development
cycle. That means linking data sources across the value chain
and feeding that data into the digital twins. But it also entails
helping our customers change their perspective on how to
think about sustainability, viewing it as an additional outcome
from leveraging a digital twin that adds value and drives innovation,
rather than a forced requirement.
For more information, visit:
www.sw.siemens.com
www.igus.com
www.3ds.com
www.molex.com
www.autodesk.com
www.techbriefs.com
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Siemens
http://www.sw.siemens.com http://www.igus.com http://www.3ds.com http://www.molex.com http://www.autodesk.com http://www.techbriefs.com
Tech Briefs Magazine - January 2024

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