PLM for a Circular Economy

October 26, 2022

The circular economy aims to increase reuse and reduce waste in products. However, product lifecycle management (PLM) is typically limited to new product introduction, rather than considering end-of-life reuse. Circularity is an opportunity to close this loop, for a lower environmental impact, and better business outcomes such as an improvement in gross margins from material cost savings.

For equipment makers, the traditional focus of product design has been on ‘design for manufacturability’. Its objective is to quickly introduce a new product, adhering to quality standards, at the lowest cost possible, and not to worry about what happens to it at the end of its life. But ‘design for circularity’ should include proactive planning and management of the entire life of parts from their design to their making, service and end of life, with maximum reuse.?PLM should evolve so that it can move away from just being an operational, visibility and cost management workflow tool to a framework for the overall lifecycle of products, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. A framework for PLM as the platform for a circular economy

To plan for circularity, the four building blocks of a circular economy as defined by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation are:

• Circular product design and production from the early design stages, specifying the purpose and performance of end-products
• New business models that have performance-based payment, not ownership of products
• Reverse cycle including supply chains to create value from materials and products after their usage
• Enablers and favorable conditions for an ecosystem - education, financing, collaborative platforms

The following are interesting aspects in PLM today to support circularity of parts and products:

• IoT to close the loop

PLM implementations at most organizations often never extended far beyond engineering teams. The growth of the IoT has reinvigorated the PLM solution space. The key components of advanced, IoT-powered PLM solution are 1) real-time IoT sensor data feed, 2) digital twins with a digital thread, and 3) cloud computing infrastructure. Networked IoT devices can be set up to gather data on devices in the field and instantly relay it back to a PLM platform as feedback for product performance.

• Part serialization

For many industries such as medical and aerospace, the ability to trace the development of a part back from its end use, through its manufacturing, simulation, design, and conception is vital to certify the part for use in the field. Traceability allows individual parts to be marked with serial numbers or identifying marks. Even multiple copies of the same part geometry in the same build tray can have unique serial numbers or markings applied.

• PLM and carbon footprint

The lifecycle carbon footprint of a new product is significantly decided during the design stage. Green Engineering is the practice of leveraging PLM data not only to help calculate the C02 footprint of a product but also to evaluate design and supply chain decisions with sustainability in mind.

• Product design as a virtual experience

Technologies like extended reality that include AR/VR make product design and lifecycle management experiential in nature. Virtual representations of not just the product under development in isolation, but in orchestration with humans and other entities in its ecosystem can be created. The virtual tools simulate possible scenarios upfront for comprehensive testing. It gets products to the market quickly and saves money for a successful launch.

• Agility in development

PLM and circularity are not about tools and techniques, but processes and practices too. The BMW Group for example has applied its agile working model systematically and universally across autonomous driving and driver assistance, from the research phase all the way through to series production development. Agile working models form a crucial basis for efficient, future-proof development. Scrum teams have an interdisciplinary structure, to bring together a variety of skills. The teams handle complex sub-processes, working independently with an end-to-end approach. The high degree of flexibility allows the teams to react quickly and effectively to new requirements.

For a truly circular, sustainable economy, it is not just end-of-life handling. All stages in the lifecycle of a product beginning from its conceptualization and design should keep circularity and sustainability in mind. PLM will be the key enterprise too that will evolve for circular, sustainable product design.

To continue to receive Infosys Knowledge Institute posts and newsletters, please do click on "follow" and subscribe to the newsletter.