Ensuring Sustainability in the Product Development Process: A New Opportunity for the Manufacturing Industry

The manufacturing industry is facing significant changes, with sustainability being a major challenge. Companies must increasingly focus on reducing toxic chemicals, greenhouse gas emissions, and the impending depletion of natural resources.

In the manufacturing industry, the sustainable approach begins in the Product Development (PD) Process, where companies must meet or even exceed sustainability requirements. This can establish a balance between economic growth and environmental protection, giving the brand a progressive character that excites customers.

But what exactly does sustainable product development mean? The goal is to design, develop, and test products in a way that meets the current needs while leaving sufficient resources for future generations. This involves creating environmentally friendly, socially meaningful, and economically feasible products.

There are various approaches to implementing sustainable product development in the manufacturing industry

1. Energy Efficiency: Products should be energy-efficient to contribute to reducing the industry's CO2 footprint.
2. Product Longevity: Products should be designed to last as long as possible to reduce the need for replacement products and minimize the environmental impact of scrap.
3. Recyclability: Products should be designed for easy recycling, including the use of recyclable materials, easy product disassembly, and the reduction of toxic chemicals.
4. Life Cycle Analysis: The entire life cycle of a product, from raw material procurement to disposal at the end of its life, should be considered. This allows for identifying opportunities to reduce the product's environmental impact.
5. Social Justice in the Supply Chain: The industry should ensure that its suppliers adhere to ethical and sustainable principles, such as fair working conditions and environmentally friendly sourcing of raw materials.

The proper application of green design practices and digital product and material approval processes can help companies reduce costs, improve product quality, and strengthen their corporate and brand image.

Integrating sustainability into the PD process begins, like any other design and approval process, with understanding product requirements and the nature of product usage. It is crucial to understand the environmental impacts associated with each new component and product in the PD process, including resource and energy consumption, waste generation, and CO2 emissions.

Sustainable Supply Chain as a Key Element in the Product Development Process

The supply chain plays a central role in the PD process as an increasing number of supply products such as components, materials, and subcomponents come from the supply chain (sometimes >80%). This automatically leads to more requirements being transferred to the supply chain, thus requiring corresponding documentation and approvals. To meet the increasing requirements of regulators and the growing interest in sustainable products, both manufacturers and suppliers face the challenge of acquiring necessary information more quickly, in more detail, and earlier in the process.

There are two major challenges:

• Many processes and information contained in documents need to be digitized to meet the new requirements.
• The integration of new processes and tools with existing, interconnected processes and systems.

?This means that collaboration needs to change, and that there is a need for greater connectivity of users, data, and processes in the product development process, not just concerning sustainability requirements.

Prepared Today for Tomorrow's Requirements

With the Supply Chain Collaboration platform material.one, manufacturers and their suppliers have a digital standard for data exchange in the supply chain. The platform provides direct access to data from the supply chain and enables a quick and efficient response to future requirements of any kind. material.one standardizes the digital exchange of data in the circular economy, ensuring optimal documentation for meeting environmental requirements for OEM companies and their supply chain.

material.one offers a unique insight into environmental metrics as well as material and product data from your supply chain. This creates a valuable pool that manufacturers can compare with data from development to field feedback, then creating a digital twin of the product with these metrics. The platform is a tool to intelligently optimize handling environmental and many other requirements and meet new standards.

Conclusion

Integrating sustainability goals into the product development process offers the manufacturing industry a new opportunity to reduce its negative environmental impacts, become more efficient, and achieve long-term success. By focusing on sustainability, companies can fulfil their responsibility to the environment and reap the economic benefits that come with an environmentally conscious product development process. The supply chain plays a crucial role in this. To meet the new era of collaboration in the supply network, environmental requirements and documentation need to be digitized and intelligently interconnected. material.one offers companies these functionalities and enables maximum transparency, time and cost savings, and improved product compliance.