4 Ways Software Can Help Make Manufacturers More Sustainable

It's no secret that manufacturers are under enormous pressure to decrease their environmental footprint. A manufacturer who is late acting on product sustainability runs the risk of losing business—perhaps their own.  

Substantive change lies ahead.

Regulations coming into force demand manufacturers be able to vouch for the footprint of their supply chain, as well as of their own operations. Far-sighted leaders will take every opportunity to make their businesses better and clear the way for innovation.

The good news is that incremental improvement yields immediate benefit (no grand gestures needed), and that software can make the journey easier—and create additional value along the way. Begin by shoring up your knowledge of basic acronyms and reflecting on a strategic concept.

Understanding the regulatory environment

Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

he European Union’s (EU) Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will ask companies to develop sustainability programs with results of sufficient quality to be reportable to investors. The CSRD builds on previous legislation with more stringent requirements that will affect more companies. It will be phased in from 2024-2028, with companies in the EU going first, followed by exporters to the EU.

In other words, if your company ships product or parts to the EU, you’ll probably need to comply.

EPD, ESPR, and DPP

As of 2026, products placed on the EU market will need an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to summarize their environmental impact. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) of 2020, products also will need a Digital Product Passport (DPP) by 2027. The DPP can include: the product’s technical performance, materials and their origins, repair activities, and recycling. 

How will your business get that information?  Or develop an approach such that the information is part of how you design the product? 

Implementing the digital thread

A digital thread is an interconnected flow of relevant data that defines a product throughout its lifecycle. It provides a comprehensive view of a product's journey, from initial design and development to manufacturing, maintenance, service, and retirement. When a digital thread is in place, the right data gets to the right people in the right form at the right time. When it isn’t, homegrown procedures and idiosyncratic tools crop up as highly skilled professionals try to keep on top of the data swirling about them so they can do their jobs. 

Your sustainability strategy—and your journey—starts at home.  A digital thread not only enables you to drive sustainability improvements across the entire enterprise, the presence of a digital thread also allows your highly skilled product designers to contribute to sustainability goals as part of their daily workflows. 

With a digital thread, companies can then focus on four strategies to improve sustainability throughout the product lifecycle: 

• Design for Sustainability
• Sustainable Product Development
• Sustainable Manufacturing
• Sustainable Service

Design for sustainability

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 80% of a product’s environmental impact is baked in at the design stage, where 70% of the product’s cost is also determined. The designer can address both these issues with software and do so way before any budget has been spent or any material ordered.

One of the duties (and part of the fun) of product design is experimentation to come up with the best possible solution to a design challenge. Using a collection of raw materials can be expensive, unwieldy, or impossible, and few engineers have the advanced physics needed to perform high-end analysis by themselves. Real-time simulation tools can accelerate the process, giving the designer instant feedback in the Creo design environment itself and totaling up embodied carbon.

Lightweighting is an effective way to increase sustainability—the product uses less material and costs less to ship. If it's a vehicle, it will cost less to operate over it's lifetime. Lightweighting can be done more efficiently with tools like AI-powered generative design, which is closely integrated with Creo. Generative design produces optimal designs from a set of system design requirements the product designer puts into the tool. Engineers can either set realistic limits within production capabilities or leave the tool to generate organic forms for additive manufacturing.

Case study: Cummins

For more than 100 years, Cummins has been in the business of power; they produce diesel and natural gas engines, power generation equipment, and related products. Sustainability— from circularity to water usage for manufacturing—is at the heart of their product design process. For every newly designed component, they have a recycling, remanufacturing, and reuse plan. To help achieve these and other corporate goals, Cummins relies on Creo and its suite of simulation tools.

Designing the product best able to meet customer and sustainability requirements.

Sustainable product development

When designers use the tools above in tandem with materials databases and manufacturing databases, they achieve a greater understanding of the environmental impact of their choices. When materials, such as steel, arrive at the dock, they carry with them embodied carbon from mining, extraction, transportation, and low-tier manufacturing. For the typical car with an internal combustion engine, McKinsey reports that materials (production and end-of-life) account for 18-25% of a car’s total emissions.

With material sourcing and selection tools, designers can optimize tradeoffs among factors such as sustainability, performance, and cost. PTC's Windchill and Creo products will both integrate with Ansys Granta Material Intelligence (MI) allowing users to select more sustainable materials and make tradeoffs. All this information can be used for compliance as well as for support when business decisions are made.

Sustainable manufacturing

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is an essential technology for tracking and evaluating sustainability tradeoffs. With PLM, all of the data associated to each part in an assembly and product is kept in a single source of truth (the PLM system) and not in homegrown or idiosyncratic personal systems. This product ‘recipe’ is known as the Bill of Materials (BOM).

Thanks to the integration of PTC’s Windchill with third-party systems such as Makersite, the designer can see the full CO2 footprint for every iteration of the BOM, whether that be for a different configuration of the product or a variant or with materials from several suppliers. Designers also can dig deeper to see a percentage figure indicating the recyclability of components and water usage for the materials involved. As the design changes, the BOMs change and the full CO2 footprint of the product updates. In addition, Creo's partnership with aPriori makes it possible to estimate the manufacturing footprint of various methods.  

Sustainable service

Poorly executed service strategies can upend customer relationships when parts are rushed overnight or delayed service turns into a full-fledged service emergency—with the emissions and costs to match. 

Using AI, PTC’s Servigistics optimizes service parts supply chains so that the right part is in the right place at the right time. If you've ever forgotten something on a trip, you can imagine the consternation an airline goes through when an engine part is not where it is needed.  

ServiceMax monitors products for when they need service, limiting truck rolls to indignant customers and making that data available to for product improvements, component reuse, and happier relationships.

Take a step back

It’s been argued we’re in a new Age of Pollution. The United Nations' 17 Goals for Sustainable Development define sustainability as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

About a century ago, horse pollution (corpses, waste, accidents and injury) imperiled the public health and growth of American cities. The internal combustion engine and the private car were viewed as ‘environmental saviors’ at the time. Today? Cars and vans produce about 10% of worldwide emissions. The next evolution of transportation is likely to be the electric car, a software-defined vehicle.

Whatever your business, don’t wait to develop a strong digital foundation. Think of your customers. You make the products they rely on, and you want to continue doing that for a long time.