From concept to production, from marketing to maintenance, the heavy mobile machinery and equipment industry is facing a radical transformation touching multiple aspects: digital management, power usage, economic viability and environmental impact. There are multiple issues on the table ranging from managing information – data and process management software, hardware and networking – to managing the energy used to power both data centers and heavy machinery -, which radically change development timing and methods, but also communication and distribution, as well as after-sales service strategies. Thus, from the increasingly pervasive use of technology to a regulatory evolution aimed at reducing environmental and social impact, from the search for more resilience supply chains impacted by legislative, political, climate and health variables to the search for the innovation that transforms customer satisfaction into loyalty, manufacturers and OEMs seek to combine quality and sustainability, moving from more intelligent and sustainability-oriented innovation.
Sustainability and Innovation in Energy Consumption
The most innovative manufacturers are investing in multiple operational and design fronts, developing a wide range of eco-friendly options.
Many manufacturers are focusing on optimizing engine performance, reducing fuel consumption at idle, and using lightweight materials to improve overall fuel efficiency. Incorporating energy-efficient features into your equipment, such as electrical motors, regenerative braking systems and automatic shutdown mechanisms, helps reduce consumption, fuel costs and environmental impact.
Sustainable design focuses on multiple development horizons: for example, modern electric excavators and wheeled loaders can run on rechargeable batteries, eliminating diesel emissions and significantly reducing noise pollution, creating a healthier and more pleasant working environment for their operators and nearby communities. Advances in battery technology are increasing both power and performance, making these solutions usable for a wider range of applications.
There is also a growth in the production of engines powered by alternative fuels: biofuels and hydrogen are gaining ground, providing cleaner alternatives to traditional diesel fuel. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells offer zero emissions and extended range, also making them ideal for larger equipment.
In general, by combining electric and alternative fuels engines, the heavy mobile machinery and equipment industry is concretely embracing the energy transition, reducing the overall CO2 emissions of the industry.
Introducing the Concept of Circular Economy
The transition towards a circular economy also has a deep impact on the heavy mobile machinery and equipment industry by perfecting Product Lifecycle Management with the inclusion of all aspects related to recyclability and the reduction of end-of-life waste. Reducing the dependence on virgin materials and improving the efficiency of production cycles, as well as increasing the sustainability of projects and products, allows designers to reduce costs, maintaining the overall efficiency of products and components.
By adopting an end-to-end approach, manufacturers are extending the scope of project evaluation from production alone to a cradle-to-cradle vision, aligning with the most virtuous concepts of the circular economy. The goal is to create a closed cycle of materials and resources in which each product is designed so that, at the end of its lifecycle, its components can be completely reused or recycled without generating waste. This requires careful selection of materials, favoring those that do not contain toxic substances and which can be efficiently recovered at the end of the product’s lifecycle. The process is sustainable because it is designed to maximize the recovery of high-quality materials which can be reintroduced into the production cycle: for example, metals can be melted and used to create new components while recycled plastics can be used to manufacture non-structural components, further reducing the environmental impact.
The goal is to extend the life of the equipment as much as possible. This is achieved by favoring a concept of productization expressed through a modular design, which allows individual components to be updated or replaced without discarding the entire machine. At the end of the machine’s lifecycle, the components must be easy to disassemble and separate for recovery.
Innovation and Collaboration
Implementing a cradle-to-cradle vision requires innovation and collaboration between manufacturers, material suppliers, recyclers and other stakeholders. This means that businesses must work together to develop new technologies and processes that support the recycling and reuse of materials, as well as promote sustainable practices throughout the supply chain. The technological innovations of recent years are helping to profoundly transform processes and procedures, leading factories to abandon reactive and dysfunctional management, moving on to choose predictive management enabled by the use of IoT sensors and actuators as well as management platforms focused on virtual environments and simulations powered by specialized machine learning algorithms and solutions. By moving from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0, i.e. embracing a model that is not only integrated and synchronized but also extremely collaborative, the heavy mobile machinery and equipment supply chain today has maximized its capacity for vision and action.
Sustainable Production is a Data-Driven Process
The key premise is that factory digitization allows producers to manage information quickly, processing it in a more advanced and analytical way, systematizing multidisciplinary skills and experiences to support every decision-making process in the supply chain by enabling collaboration at unprecedented levels. Instead of a silo-oriented production culture, where orders, technical data and feasibility projects exist across multiple departments (designers, engineers, technicians, programmers, salespeople, purchasing office, administration, customer service and so on), and are almost never integrated and synchronized, by using a single collaborative and securitized platform, designers can create a three-dimensional virtual twin of the product which is far cheaper and more sustainable than a physical prototype, as well as taking into account constraints, requirements, specifications, needs and variables. Experimenting with a virtual prototype in an infinite capacity simulation environment through static and dynamic images, allows designers to gain an understanding of all the geometric, mechanical, thermal, hydraulic and electronic characteristics of the product, gaining an insight into what happens inside the materials, gears and components. Thanks to this information transparency in the demo phase, the customer still has room to ask for changes and additional specifications based on needs that they may have not considered initially.
New Metrics Required for Sustainable Transition in Heavy Machinery
For the Heavy Machinery industry, carbon neutrality is just the first step of a more functional and virtuous approach. The next step is understanding how to achieve net zero at the process level, measuring the end-to-end environmental impact of a business’s activities. Starting from the management of natural resources, companies must consider the entire lifecycle of materials, from extraction to disposal, to identify the most environmentally friendly options while also improving operational and production efficiency.
In this sense, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) plays a crucial role in measuring the environmental impact of products and services from procurement of raw materials to delivery of the finished product.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers digital continuity along the entire value chain, guaranteeing a holistic vision that allows you to develop machinery that not only satisfies required technical specifications but also reaches all the quality, reliability and sustainability standards expected by customers and required by regulators.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform: Building in Sustainability from the Drawing Board
Specifically, the Sustainable Innovation Intelligence solution unified into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform integrates LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) technologies and virtual twins with design and delivery functions to enable a detailed environmental assessment right at the design phase and subsequently make it available to all participants in the downstream innovation process. This new technological asset allows all Heavy Mobile Machinery and Equipment operators to implement sustainability objectively and functionally right from the very beginning of the design phase, with a clear understanding of which actions have the greatest total environmental impact and providing reliable information for everyone in all contexts, from raw material procurement to production and recovery.
Sustainable Innovation Intelligence allows you to:
- Follow a sustainability-oriented engineering approach, pursuing sustainable goals, strengthening eco-design practices and driving eco-friendly innovation throughout the product lifecycle.
- Follow a sustainability-oriented engineering approach, pursuing sustainable goals, strengthening eco-design practices and driving eco-friendly innovation throughout the product lifecycle.
- Assess and optimize sustainability-oriented human activities with a clear understanding of the environmental impact along the entire value chain, from raw material procurement to packaging, from production to transportation, from maintenance to recovery, to end-of-life.
- Explore design alternatives and model different scenarios using a parameterized simulation, which allows design teams to work collaboratively, determining the best trade-offs with measurable benefits to identify the best sustainable solutions.
Discover more about how the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is shaping the next generation of heavy mobile machinery here.
Abid Hussain leads the strategy and solutions development for the Heavy Mobile Machinery Market. As a solution experience expert, he uses his strategic vision, competitive analysis and pre-sales coordination skills to support sales teams and customer accounts at Dassault Systems.