Sustainability and social responsibility are not only ethical values, but also competitive advantages in today's market. Customers, investors, regulators, and employees are increasingly demanding that products are designed and manufactured with environmental and social impacts in mind. How can you use your PLM system to support these goals?
PLM stands for product lifecycle management, a system that integrates and manages all the information and processes related to a product, from concept to end-of-life. PLM helps you coordinate and collaborate with different stakeholders, such as engineers, suppliers, customers, and service providers, and optimize your product development and delivery.
PLM is a centralized hub in business, particularly manufacturing, optimizing product development stages. It fosters seamless collaboration among teams, ensuring organized, accessible information. By streamlining workflows and ensuring compliance, PLM enhances efficiency and innovation. It supports maintaining quality and meeting regulatory standards. PLM acts as a trusted ally, guiding NPD/NPI teams through product development efficiently, fostering collaboration, innovation, and idea realization.
Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can help you achieve this goal by enabling you to reduce waste and emissions through improved product design, material selection, manufacturing efficiency, and logistics. Additionally, PLM can extend product lifespan by enhancing quality, reliability, and maintainability. Furthermore, it can increase product recyclability and reuse by facilitating product disassembly, recovery, and remanufacturing. Lastly, PLM can monitor and report your product environmental performance by collecting and analyzing data from the system and other sources.
PLM promotes sustainability by guiding manufacturers to create eco-friendly products and uphold social responsibility. It facilitates material selection and design, optimizing manufacturing to minimize energy use and emissions. PLM tracks products throughout their lifecycle, ensuring responsible usage and disposal. Collaboration with ethical suppliers fosters fair labor practices. By integrating sustainability, PLM enables manufacturing organizations to positively impact the planet and communities, benefiting customers and the environment.
The environmental impact of a product is a product-specifying attribute. There is no difference in documenting ingredients and their compositions, an item's raw materials, or the component's carbon impact. The natural place to manage such is where all other product specifications are maintained throughout the lifecycle. Considering the environmental impact of a product as a part of a PLM strategy will enable an organization to agree on standards to be used. It will make it possible to incorporate them into product requirements and force an organization to break goals down to the product or SKU level. Only when we make them a natural part of product specification can we design accordingly and measure how well we have designed something.
Social responsibility means acting in a way that benefits the society and the stakeholders involved in your product lifecycle. PLM can facilitate this by enabling you to ensure product safety and compliance, promote product accessibility and inclusivity, enhance product transparency and traceability, and engage and empower your product stakeholders. This can be accomplished by managing your product requirements, specifications, and standards, verifying product testing and certification, incorporating user feedback into product design and development, tracking product components, materials, and suppliers, disclosing product information and impacts, communicating with stakeholders through your PLM system, and collaborating with them through other channels.
Here is a very particular example where PLM can support social responsibility. Mica Minerals are a group of silicate minerals used in cosmetics and food. It is often prone to labor abuse and the use of child labor. Organizations like the Responsible Mica Initiative certify producers for responsible labor conditions, and many companies are committed to increasing the proportion of ‘certified’ mica. PLM systems keep track of products that require mica and document what proportion came from responsible sources. To determine the proportion of responsibly sourced mica, PLM data are crossed with sales and procurement data and provide the required sustainability KPI. The logic applies to many other resourcing issues like Palm Oil, Lithium, a.o.
To maximize the value of your PLM system for sustainability and social responsibility, it is essential to align your PLM strategy with your goals, integrate it with other systems, train and educate users and stakeholders, and review and improve the system regularly. Additionally, you should seek feedback and suggestions from users and stakeholders to ensure your PLM system is effective in achieving your sustainability and social responsibility objectives.
Collaborating with our HVAC client involves analyzing their current Windchill PLM setup, extracting valuable metrics, and devising a roadmap to maximize Windchill's capabilities for their NPD initiatives with a focus on sustainability and social responsibility. We optimize collaboration, business process, and regulatory compliance while ensuring seamless integration with existing systems. Through personalized consulting and continuous support, we empower their team to harness Windchill's full potential, fostering innovation and expediting time to market. Together, we streamline product lifecycle management while prioritizing sustainability and social responsibility.
Incorporar ferramentas de análise de ciclo de vida para avaliar o impacto ambiental dos materiais e processos utilizados durante o design e desenvolvimento. Além disso, é importante otimizar a eficiência energética e minimizar resíduos durante a fabrica??o, aproveitando recursos como simula??es de processo e análise de fluxo de trabalho oferecidos pelo PLM. Ao longo do ciclo de vida do produto, é essencial rastrear e gerenciar o uso responsável de recursos naturais, bem como monitorar e relatar o desempenho relacionado à sustentabilidade e responsabilidade social.
To inspire you, here are some examples of how companies have leveraged their PLM systems to meet their sustainability and social responsibility goals. Tesla, a leader in electric vehicles, has used its PLM system to design, engineer, and manufacture its products while minimizing environmental impact and maximizing customer satisfaction. Patagonia, a pioneer in sustainable fashion, has used its PLM system to manage product development, sourcing, and distribution while upholding its environmental and social standards and values. Philips, a global leader in health technology, has used its PLM system to create and deliver its solutions while improving product quality, safety, and efficiency as well as reducing product waste and emissions.
Por exemplo, no design e desenvolvimento, o PLM pode integrar ferramentas de análise de ciclo de vida para avaliar o impacto ambiental dos materiais e processos utilizados. Durante a fabrica??o, o PLM pode otimizar a eficiência energética e minimizar resíduos. Além disso, o sistema pode rastrear e gerenciar o uso responsável de recursos naturais ao longo do ciclo de vida do produto. Também é possível incluir indicadores de desempenho relacionados à sustentabilidade e responsabilidade social para monitorar o progresso e fornecer dados transparentes para partes interessadas.