Implementing Sustainable Mobility:
PLM's Challenges, Benefits and Opportunities

OraSIM™ Vol. 3, No. 2
Ora Research Letter on Digital Prototyping, Simulation & Analysis April 9, 2010

By Bruce Jenkins, CEO

Our last research letter explored what, beyond greener vehicles, "sustainable mobility" really means as a holistic business strategy. This time we look at the potential of PLM tools and practices to support auto makers' efforts to implement core aspects of their sustainability initiatives.

Today the global automotive industry’s sharpest sustainability focus is on attaining target vehicle attributes for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions – the sense of urgency, if not near-alarm, communicated by senior executives across the U.S., Europe and Asia alike is striking. To these ends, PLM’s value in supporting effective decision-making is well understood, and widely applied. But greener vehicles are only a first step in what must necessarily be a much more broadly conceived and deeply implemented set of goals. PLM technologies hold the potential to help advance the global automotive industry toward its sustainability objectives by supporting and optimizing five major functional areas that, together, span sustainability’s triple bottom line of people/planet/profit:

• Planning for sustainability – PLM supports portfolio and requirements planning and management.
• Design for sustainability – PLM supports designer decision-making around key product attributes that impact product and business sustainability – consumer appeal, regulatory compliance, materials selection, cost information, etc.
• Sustainable manufacturing – PLM includes capabilities for optimizing manufacturing processes and equipment to conserve power, water and other resources consumed in production.
• Sustainable service and end-of-life – PLM provides a managed information backbone to support designer decision-making around service part definition, repair procedures, and part/fluid recycling/disposal.
• Governance, compliance and reporting – PLM provides a managed information backbone to support these issues cradle-to-grave and beyond.

Sustainability in product planning The ability to effectively identify and address the needs and wants of the marketplace is the cornerstone of any successful product planning effort. Add sustainability to the mix and the challenge becomes that much greater. Specifically, sustainability in product planning must encompass not only general product requirements planning and management, but must capture “green” product specifications and take into account current and anticipated regulatory compliance requirements, as well; must support the ability to identify and source suitable sustainable materials; must provide the ability to perform effective sustainability scenario planning and product lifecycle assessments; and in general must support effective sustainable product portfolio management, capable of comprehending the environmental, social and economic impact of product planning decisions. A capable, properly resourced and implemented PLM system can support this planning effort in a number of ways – from enabling companies to perform sustainability-related what-if analysis early in the design cycle to identifying suitable sustainability-focused suppliers and sources of materials.

Sustainable product design and development The application of sustainability principles to the product design phase is critical for companies seeking to achieve the kind of triple-bottom-line ROI benefits sought by leading manufacturers, since it is during this early phase of the product lifecycle that product design decisions have the greatest impact – whether on cost, performance or the environment. To this end, it becomes important for organizations seeking to support sustainable design to be able to capitalize on engineering design and analysis tools and other analytics to validate product concepts against specific sustainability criteria up-front prior to manufacture (weight reduction, fuel efficiency, emissions targets, etc.) and to examine key product attributes that impact product and business sustainability: consumer appeal, regulatory compliance, materials selection, cost information and the like. Here PLM tools excel, because of their roots in the product design and development environment. 

Sustainable manufacturing tools and processes Sustainable manufacturing – with its emphasis on environmentally friendly practices and the ability to reduce the environmental footprint of its manufacturing facilities and processes – must provide effective capabilities for optimizing manufacturing operations and equipment to conserve power, water and other resources consumed in production. In this regard, PLM systems that support factory simulation can play a vital role in allowing manufacturers to perform sustainability-related what-ifs pertaining to waste reduction, material reuse and recycling, and improved overall energy efficiency.

Sustainable product delivery, use and support Increasingly manufacturers are looking beyond the design and manufacturing phase and are taking steps to reduce the environmental impact and support the sustainability of their products during actual use, service and retirement. Indeed, guidelines for proper disposal, disassembly and retirement are increasingly becoming the responsibility of the manufacturer. With this in mind, leading manufacturers today are also focused on sustainability principles as applied to actual product use, performance, maintenance, repair, disposal (end of vehicle life, etc.), as well as initiatives related to minimizing environmental impact through such efforts as CO2 emissions reduction, recycling programs (reduce/reuse/recycle), lean principles (fewer parts, use of recycled materials, etc.). Here, as a data management system that spans the lifecycle of the product, PLM can play a role in facilitating design for environmentally friendly performance, ease of use, ease of disassembly, providing instructions for repair and proper disposal, and identifying opportunities for emissions reduction, recycling and reuse.

Governance, compliance and reporting With the need to manage product data and information relating to regulatory and environmental compliance becoming increasingly critical for manufacturers around the globe, many are beginning to take a more proactive stance toward sustainability reporting. Indeed, the ability to, for example, provide an audit trail in the event of a product recall is critical for many manufacturers today. As a comprehensive product data management system, PLM can offer manufacturers the ability to both track and manage compliance requirements, and provide the framework necessary to support internal governance, auditing and reporting.

Next time: Implementation challenges, bridging organizational disconnects, aligning cultures of relevance.

This research is excerpted from our white paper Sustainable Mobility: Automotive Industry Challenges, Opportunities and the Role of PLM. Request your copy of the white paper