Siemens Digital Industries Software is the latest of the engineering software giants to add sustainability technology to its PLM software. The aim is to help engineers optimize their product designs early in the development cycle in regards to their impact on the environment—just as they would optimize a product for anything else, from costs to efficiency.
“Today, it is thought that 80 percent of the environmental impact associated with a product can be avoided in the development and design phase. Our collaboration with sustamize will enable customers to understand the environmental impacts of their products and processes early in the product development based on comprehensive, up-to-date data,” said Eryn Devola, Vice President of Sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries Software, in a release.
Instead of embedding lifecycle assessment (LCA) data for various environmental factors into a new tool on the platform—as Dassault Systèmes recently did with the help of the Ecoinvent database—Siemens’ tool focuses on carbon and energy footprint data from the climate technology company sustamize. This is also evident from the name of the new tool, Teamcenter Carbon Footprint Calculator.
The calculator will be part of the cost management solutions in the Siemens Xcelerator platform. It will help engineers measure, simulate, reduce and track the energy usage and carbon footprint along the value chain of a project as they iterate a design.
Devola added, “By empowering our community to make fact-based decisions based on uniform data along the entire supply chain, we can assist them to avoid hazardous materials, use materials and energy efficiently, develop clean manufacturing procedures and help to accelerate the transition to net zero.”
The database being added to Xcelerator includes a library of carbon emission and energy data for frequently used materials. This data has been scientifically researched and validated according to ISO 14048. The information includes Scope 3 emissions—the environmental impact from external services and parts related to the product. Though currently only carbon emissions and energy data is included, the release notes that additional environmental category data can be added based on demand.
"Empowering users across manufacturing focused organizations to understand the CO2e impacts and drivers in their own products and supply chains, while working with a sophisticated tool that is already familiar and user-friendly, is a game changer in overcoming hurdles related to CO2e management,” said Viola Hasani, Co-founder and Customer Success Lead, sustamize.
For more on the introduction of sustainability products into PLM systems, read: PLM & Sustainability: Dassault Introduces New Life Cycle Analysis Solution on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.