Almost every major corporation worldwide is announcing plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and meet other sustainability goals. Details on how they plan to achieve those goals, however, tend to be sketchy.
Without measurable action plans, a spokesperson for the climate arm of advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recently told The New York Times, “we project emissions for S&P 500 companies will end up being triple what they should be in 2050.”
Clearly, we all need to get serious about walking the talk, and fast. One practical strategy that every manufacturing and construction company can adopt immediately: calculating the environmental impacts of every product decision while there’s still time to make different, more sustainable choices.
If that sounds impossible, it isn’t. In fact, we’re proud to say that Dassault Systèmes today announced this very capability, with “Sustainable Innovation Intelligence” that covers the entire value chain and is fully embedded on the cloud-based 3DXPERIENCE platform.
Measure, then manage
Engineers often say that “what you can’t measure, you can’t manage.” Until now, designers, engineers, purchasing agents, logistics managers and more couldn’t measure the environmental impacts of their decisions. Now, with Sustainable Innovation Intelligence built into the software they use every day, users can see the impacts of all available options before they select a part, a supplier, a design or a manufacturing strategy. Armed with these insights, they can choose those options with the lowest impacts.
The “measure-and-manage” capabilities of Sustainable Innovation Intelligence are enabled by a strategic partnership with ecoinvent Assocation, the global leader in life cycle assessment (LCA) data for sustainability. Typically, such data is used only to measure the impact of a company’s activities after the fact, when it is too late to make different choices, and can only be applied and interpreted by LCA experts. By fully embedding ecoinvent’s databases into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, however, non-expert users can now predict the impacts of more than 18,000 industrial and agricultural processes on decisions in virtual design, product development, manufacturing engineering, operations and logistics.
“Our partnership with Dassault Systèmes is the first one with a software company in which our database is used at the very beginning of the product and manufacturing engineering processes for sustainability assessments,” said Emilia Moreno Ruiz, interim director, ecoinvent Association. “LCA brings the metrics needed to evaluate environmental impacts across the product lifecycle. Integrating that with virtual twin technology opens new possibilities to address these impacts early on.”
Adds Florence Verelen, executive vice president of Industry, Marketing and Sustainability at Dassault Systèmes: “Whether in manufacturing, infrastructure and cities, or life sciences, data science experiences that combine LCA capabilities with virtual twin technology offer companies new ways to innovate by understanding how their decisions affect natural resources, ecosystems and health. Through our 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we aim to help companies contribute to the United Nations’ Decade of Action and thrive while doing so.”
Practical action
If you’ve been confused about how to deliver on goals of 50% greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 and net-zero by 2050, and concerned about the damage that failure to achieve these goals can do to your bottom line, Sustainable Innovation Intelligence provides at least part of your answer.
So stop worrying and start acting. Together, we can do this.
Click here for more information on Sustainable Innovation Intelligence