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PLM for Sustainability: the train is running … where?
February 9th, 2012 Rainer Mewaldt Tags: Design for Environment, DfE, Engineering, PLM, PLM for Sustainability, Sustainability
Posted in sustainability |
Sustainability is a number one topic for product driven companies nowadays. Not a new finding. But it soaked through the whole supply chain meanwhile. “Green-washing” is less possible and companies are facing the challenge to engineer sustainability into their products. This is known as “Design for Environment” (DfE).
Engineers learned over decades how to predict mechanical behavior of components by using FEM analyses and virtual prototypes. It took at least the last decade to get accustom with requirements engineering and engineer to cost. How long will it take until average engineers have common tools and methods to predict the influence of design decisions on the environmental footprint?
Obviously actual PLM systems provide basic functionalities to handle environmental data. But they do not offer out-of-the-box functionality for analysis, relations and predictions. On the other hand, vendors like PE International offer specialized solutions, able to cover highly complex requirements of e.g. automotive OEMs.
The 80% of conventional companies are left in the cloud, do you agree with me? Companies having demand for guidance and best practice as well as a simple set of PLM functions for the day to day DfE business of the ordinary engineer. Management of environmental data as an integrated part of the product data. Incorporated into the overall change and configuration management process and as naturally imbedded as any classification data. Functions to calculate and simulate environmental parameters throughout the part structure, including supplier and manufacturing alternatives.
Could be a good candidate for a showcase, don’t you think? Any volunteer for a pilot?
Rainer Mewaldt
Rainer is responsible for Application Management Services and Cloud Computing in the domain of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) of Atos. As a member of the Atos Scientific Community he is the global track leader for PLM. After graduating in Production Engineering in 1986, he was continuously active on the cutting edge of product creation and development. Responsible for PLM processes and applications inside industry companies for over a decade, he moved to IT consulting and service companies, managing complex projects and offering strategic guidance to their industry customers. Rainer is experienced in various industries like discrete manufacturing, automotive and high-tech like aerospace and healthcare, having profound knowledge in market leading PLM and engineering applications and system architectures. His strength is the ability to match the current and future challenges of a company in product creation with effective and efficient solutions on the process and IT layer.
Hello everybody,
I fully agree, as sustainability awareness of modern societies keeps growing more and more and legal requirements will emerging (when it comes to regulated products e.g. on a EU-level) it is not merely a useful extension of traditional PLM scope but an essential one. It can help companies cutting through the complexity of environmental impact. Only the usage of a seamless system can evolve the concept of carbon-footprints to the next level.
Thanks José for the project example from healthcare.
Best, ben
Hi Rainer and all,
the Design for Environment challenge requires sustanainability management tools to focus not only on intra-company but also on cross-company processes, data, communities etc. As Anil already has pointed at, Life-Cycle-Analysis for goods including related services are essential. Therefore I share your point of combining the worlds of PLM and sustainability management.
On the sustainability side the research project OEPI http://oepi-project.eu/ prototypes the processing of (environmental) data originating from semantically heterogeneous sources for the purposes of unified reporting etc. The key cconcept is the Environmental Performance Indicator (EPI). Atos C-LAB is working on an ontology-based approach for coping with heterogeneous data.
We would be happy to contribute to your vision!
Contact: Matthias.Niemeyer@atos.net, Elke.Loeschner@atos.net
Hello Rainer,
This is a welcome topic.
It makes no sense to use an energy efficient product, while the maximum damage to the environment has already been done while manufacturing it.
Therefore it is important to track environmental impact of a component/product through its lifecycle.
There is definately an opportunity in the market to introduce a guidance to measure carbon footprint of a product/component on the basis of parameters like:
Raw Material,Source,Transportation,Manufacturing operations involved,Storage.
Good call Rainer! Fortunately, environmental IT is a field with very significant interoperability and open standards activity, so it is very easy for us to integrate environmental data with business data. Our colleagues in Atos Spain are among the world leaders in this field. Check out the integration of healthcare and environmental data they’re donig in the EO2HEAVEN project: http://www.eo2heaven.org/ We’re one step closer to your suggested pilot!