Green starts with PLM
Green & sustainability initiatives can be discussed across
three functional domains: product design/life-cycle
management, facilities/factory management, and supply chain
management. But in the rush to cover announcements from ERP vendors
around emissions tracking functionality, which is topical right now
because of the attention on possible cap & trade regulations,
it’s been easy for me to forget the crucial link between product
lifecycle management (PLM) and green. The simple fact is that some
of the biggest environmental gains a manufacturer can make spring
from the design phase.
How big can the gains be? According to the Environmental Defense Fund’s
Innovation Exchange, when Wal-Mart collaborated with Procter
& Gamble, Unilever, and other manufacturers to sell liquid
detergent in concentrated form, over three years, the manufacturers
are
expected to save 400 million gallons of water, 95 million
pounds of plastic, and 125 million pounds of cardboard over three
years. Of course, Wal-Mart saves space and costs on truck transport
and on their store shelves. This Environmental Defense Fund site
details several others successes in manufacturing, including how
the Fund partnered with Bristol-Myers Squib to create a software
program called Managing Environmental Resources, Guidance and
Evaluation, or MERGE, as a tool to analyze the impact of package
design. For the company’s Renewal shampoo, MERGE helped identify
ways to cut solid waste by more than 80 tons and greenhouse gas
emissions by more than 100 tons annually.
PLM software vendors also offer applications that can make product
lines and manufacturing processes for new products greener. While
much of the focus in PLM over the years has been on compressing
time to market, PLM has long been used for green-related goals such
as reducing waste, compliance with restricted materials rules, and
parts reuse.
PLM vendors continue to beef up their green capabilities. For
example, late last year,
PTC acquired Synapsis Technology, a vendor that focuses with on
compliance with regulations over restricted materials. When it
comes to greening the manufacturing process for upcoming products,
vendors such as Dassault Systèmes with its Delmia software, and
Siemens PLM Software with its Tecnomatix
software, offer solutions that can help design a more sustainable
manufacturing process. PLM vendors also may offer solutions for
product portfolio planning and product ideation that can track
sustainability factors. The ultimate green PLM tool might be a
portfolio planning app that takes into account Scope 3 supply chain
emissions that would be involved in product fulfillment once sales
for a new product fully ramp up.
Green needs to be addressed at the product design/PLM level, the
factory management level, as well as at the supply chain level.
Each level is important in its way, but PLM can be thought of the
starting point for environmental gains, and the concept that cuts
across all three levels.
Jagmeet Singh commented:
Ok. Now there is another challenge in maintaining the environmental
data in systems. I think keeping that data in ERP or SCM would
overload them and would infact challenge the purpose of ERP/ SCM.
The basic theme of green product compliance is very core at PLM.
And as far as I have understood, material complaince modules are
built on top of PLM Not on ERP. Second aspect which is equally
important is the EOL management. Without including that in the
green PLM definition, the concept will remain imcomplete. Over the
period of time the product life cycles are no longer cradle to
grave, infact they have matured into cradle-reincarnate-grave. Till
the time PLM tools are Not able to cater such offerings, it would
be difficult to make green products. It is important to investigate
and answer: why it is important to have green in design phase?
Jagmeet Singh commented:
Ok. Now there is another challenge in maintaining the environmental
data in systems. I think keeping that data in ERP or SCM would
overload them and would infact challenge the purpose of ERP/ SCM.
The basic theme of green product compliance is very core at PLM.
And as far as I have understood, material complaince modules are
built on top of PLM Not on ERP. Second aspect which is equally
important is the EOL management. Without including that in the
green PLM definition, the concept will remain imcomplete. Over the
period of time the product life cycles are no longer cradle to
grave, infact they have matured into cradle-reincarnate-grave. Till
the time PLM tools are Not able to cater such offerings, it would
be difficult to make green products. It is important to investigate
and answer: why it is important to have green in design phase?
Roberto Michel commented:
Good points. It would be hard to have to manually track down a
bunch of environmental data in an ERP or SCM system while working
in a PLM system. What's needed is integration with supply chain
data on factors like packaging, supply network mileage, etc., so
green-related information is just a click away within a product
ideation or portfolio planning module in PLM. I know from speaking
to Colgate-Palmolive recently, that this sort of blending of
information between PLM and SCM is what they are hoping to gain by
tesing out product ideation as part of SAP's next generation suite.
They are one of the ramp up customers. At any rate, your point is
well taken, tracking down all green related data during product
development can be extremely difficult.
Jagmeet Singh commented:
Agreed that green must be addressed at the design phase itself.
However there is a catch and is easier said than done. With
overload of information at designer end, adding green component
creates a chaos. This is true because the current PLM capability
offering in this area have been more from the compliance-met or
compliance-not met criteria and what designer needs at the design
stage is the aid which could tell the best possible green design.
Some companies have been able to do so in house and PLM as a
technology must ramp-up to this demand quickly. A framewok needs to
defined and designed around Green and PLM thus coverign complete
lifecycle of the product. Fortunately, I have had a brief look at
Synapsis and it is also on the same lines i.e information about
material compliance where designing green product is a much broader
concept in itself.
Jagmeet Singh commented:
Agreed that green must be addressed at the design phase itself.
However there is a catch and is easier said than done. With
overload of information at designer end, adding green component
creates a chaos. This is true because the current PLM capability
offering in this area have been more from the compliance-met or
compliance-not met criteria and what designer needs at the design
stage is the aid which could tell the best possible green design.
Some companies have been able to do so in house and PLM as a
technology must ramp-up to this demand quickly. A framewok needs to
defined and designed around Green and PLM thus coverign complete
lifecycle of the product. Fortunately, I have had a brief look at
Synapsis and it is also on the same lines i.e information about
material compliance where designing green product is a much broader
concept in itself.
