From Idea to Disposal: How PLM is Boosting Sustainability

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GKN's vehicles showcase their drive towards sustainable automotive design
GKM Automotive’s Tom Salisbury tells how product lifecycle management is embedding sustainability into manufacturing – from product concept to end-of-life

Product Lifecycle Management is not likely to break the ice at dinner parties.

So let’s try presenting it a little differently:

Furby: The Life Story.

Action Man: From Conception to Landfill.

Loom to Doom: The Fleeting Existence of a Cheap T-Shirt.

These are the essence of PLM, which is a strategic way to manage the life of a product from its inception to its disposal.

In manufacturing, it is essential, giving companies of all sizes the ability to streamline operations, improve product quality and reduce time-to-market.

This is done by integrating people, processes, business systems and information across the product's lifecycle.

One of the most significant spin-offs for companies is increased sustainability. For all of the streamlining, integrating, product improvement and supply chain shortening has an impact on carbon emissions.

So, how are businesses embedding PLM into their working practices? And how are they tracking their carbon-cutting progress?

Gemma Thompson, Senior Consultant at Proxima, Gemma Thompson discusses how PLM empowers procurement for sustainable practices

PLM and sustainability at Proxima and PTC

Gemma Thompson, Senior Consultant for Strategy and Growth at Proxima, and Dave Duncan, VP Sustainability at PTC, spoke about how PLM can help procurement to be more sustainable. 

Proxima, which is part of Bain & Company, helps organisations to either deliver procurement or to build great procurement functions. Through its sustainability service lines, it has helped companies like Barclays, Activision Blizzard, Marks & Spencer and Siemens.

PTC hosts a portfolio of software solutions that manage data throughout a product’s lifecycle – driving excellence in engineering and design, efficiency in manufacturing and supply chain, and optimisation in operations and services.

PTC has worked with Volvo, Polaris and Schneider Electric. While not a Fortune 500 company, 95% of Fortune 500 discrete manufacturing companies use PTC's software.

Gemma explains how this data can inform interventions to reduce Scope 1 emissions: "PLM systems help optimise the procurement process in several ways, such as:

  • Supplier selection based on carbon intensity of products

  • Process efficiency to reduce carbon, such as being more energy-efficient through improved transport routes and logistics

  • Innovation and change management by adopting more sustainable practices, such as exploring renewable energy options and sustainable materials

  • Material substitution can also be deployed when materials have a high embodied carbon content."

Dave Duncan, VP Sustainability at PTC, highlights the role of PLM tools in reducing Scope 2 emissions for better supplier management

Giving Scope 2 efforts a nudge

Dave believes PLM systems can drive supplier improvement in Scope 2 emissions, saying: "PLM tools can integrate to material and component supplier catalogues.

“Increasingly, these catalogues indicate overall carbon footprint of the materials or components, but generally at the Scope 3 level, which embed supplier Scope 2 but not exclusively.

“To push a supplier to specifically reduce Scope 2, this is done with sourcing policies for Science-Based Targets (SBT) commitments.

“PLM users in turn receive SBT-committed suppliers as 'approved' or 'preferred' in their interfaces. These SBT commitments effectively require rapid Scope 2 improvement by 2030 through renewable electricity purchases."

How Does PLM Work?

PLM works by providing a centralised repository for all product-related information, which is accessible to various stakeholders across the organisation.

The process can be broken down into several key stages:

  1. Concept and Design: PLM systems facilitate collaboration among designers, engineers and other stakeholders, allowing them to share and refine ideas quickly

  2. Development: PLM tools help manage the transition from digital models to physical products, ensuring that designs are manufacturable and meet the required specifications

  3. Manufacturing: PLM systems help coordinate the manufacturing process, ensuring that materials, equipment and labour are available and used efficiently.

As more manufacturers implement sustainable business models, PLM systems are enabling circular product lifecycle practices in the early stages of the design process.

This makes it easier for companies to make products using a continuous cycle that includes: design, manufacturing, delivery, service, return, end of life or repair, reuse, recycle or refurbish. 

PLM software enables businesses to track and measure the sustainability of their products over time.

PLM: The circular argument

PLM helps manufacturers become more sustainable and more circular by:

  • Streamlining environmental processes to ensure products are compliant with environmental standards and drive more environmentally conscious products to development

  • Integrating with online component databases like SiliconExpert and Octopart to source sustainable parts

  • Enabling real-time collaboration between internal teams and external supply chain partners to ensure design for manufacturability

  • Eliminating design and latest-build confusion to reduce costly scrap and rework or production delays

  • Addressing sustainability considerations in the design process, encouraging the adoption of eco-friendly practices early on.

Tom Salisbury, Director of Sustainability at GKN Automotive, outlines GKN's approach to integrating sustainability through effective PLM processes

Embedding PLM into manufacturing

Tom Salisbury is Director of Sustainability at GKN Automotive, a motor vehicle components manufacturer with a 260-year timeline.

GKN produces automotive driveline technology and is a key developer of eDrive systems for hybrid and fully electric vehicles.

Tom, who was planning to work with NGOs before a sustainability team internship at SABMiller turned his head, has been working in the sector for 15 years.

He says: “My role at GKN Automotive is to oversee our sustainability strategy, making sure we are on track against our targets and really embedding sustainability across the organisation.”

However, it is no longer enough for a business to put its own house in order: Scope 3 reporting means there is a broader responsibility for supply chain emissions.

Tom says GKN’s customers are “wanting to drive sustainability through their supply chains. And we need to make sure that we not only deliver on that, but actually see that as an opportunity to differentiate our business as well.”

The supply chain challenge is exemplified by the EV market, Tom says.

“EVs have much less carbon emissions associated with the use of that car than a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle.

“What that means is, as a proportion, it's then really more about the materials and the supply chain.

“The focus is shifted from the car to the supply chain.”

Product Sustainability Office

Realistically, there is no way to effectively decarbonise manufacturing without PLM processes.

Tom says GKN has embraced PLM by, for example, setting up a product sustainability office within its engineering function.

He says: “The purpose of that is to improve our understanding and measurement of the carbon impact of our products.

“When we're selling a side shaft to a customer, they are increasingly wanting to know what the carbon footprint of that is.

“They want to know whether we’ve done a life cycle assessment of that.”

Tom adds: “What that entails is getting product specific information. So you're looking into the supply chain, looking at the materials that we are purchasing, asking what the environmental footprint is for those and then itemising the carbon and the different processes that we'd have at our sites.”

The process is getting significant buy-in from GKN’s supply chain.

Tom says: “We're getting more and more requests from our customers, so it's really starting to become embedded in the process.

“As you do that, you better understand the product life cycle and you're measuring it better. You're getting more data. So then you can start to think about improving it by looking at the materials being used.”

He adds another piece of the PLM puzzle, which GKN launched in 2023 – a new platform to start gathering broader environmental data from its suppliers.

GKN Automotive champions sustainability with innovative PLM strategies in automotive component manufacturing

The early signs are good

With initiatives such as those already mentioned, plus a supply assurance questionnaire, which assesses suppliers on their ESG performance, GKN is seeing significant progress.

Tom says: “We reduced our carbon emissions by 10.5% last year. So we are starting to kind of see some progress.

“We also have targets around renewable electricity. So 50% by 2025, 75% by 2030. Actually purchasing renewable electricity will be a really important enabler of getting towards our net zero targets.”

While it is not the panacea, PLM is a central tool that businesses are using to cut their carbon emissions – and those of their supply chain.


To read the full story in the magazine click HERE.

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