To stop the man-made climate change, the manufacturing industry must take up its part. The focus will be on economic and ecological efficiency in the near future. Besides utilizing new technologies and reducing resource consumption, considering e.g. energy flexibility, promises great potential on sustainability aspects.

Sustainability in the focus

Most countries have committed themselves to the 2-degree goal of the Paris climate agreement. Europe wants to become the first CO2-neutral continent by 2050. Germany will introduce a carbon tax on emissions. The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock declared that climate risks are investment risks and thus will not invest in “dirty energies” anymore[1]. All those examples indicate the next big transformational challenge for industrial companies.

Car manufacturers like Volkswagen and Daimler as well as Tier I suppliers such as Bosch and Continental have taken up this issue. They rush ahead to anticipate risks and seize opportunities by declaring CO2-neutral production and products between 2020 (Bosch) and 2050 (VW)[2]. This increases pressure on Tier II suppliers and especially raw material producers significantly since they must deliver CO2-neutral products themselves. For those predominately small- and medium-sized companies, that implies additional challenges on top of those already raised through the digital transformation. Most of them are overstrained with the digital transformation already. The good news: both topics do not exclude each other. In fact, they overlap and provide huge potential when combined and integrated in existing structures and systems.

Chances instead of risks

The potential benefits are of three key aspects: brand image and competitive advantage, meeting legal regulations as well as cost savings and productivity increase. Truthful sustainability will provide positive reputation with new sales opportunities, an increase in brand value as well as attraction to new talents and investors. Complying to legal regulations, guidelines and laws for cleanliness, recycling and waste will bring image profit and ensure continuity of operations. As a side effect cost savings can be achieved as well as fines be avoided when complying to standards and trading CO2 certificates. Finally, optimization and taking more parameters into account will provide productivity and quality gains and thus reduce costs.

The key question remains on how to achieve minimal environmental impact while increasing economic gains by optimal utilization of digital enabling technologies. Capgemini identified five major fields to combine ecological and economic benefits by establishing sustainable operations as can be seen in figure 1.

Figure 1: Key topics for ecological change

Besides further optimizing processes, maximum utilization of resources, using innovative technologies as well as scaling existing solutions, one focus topic is the overall consideration of energy consumption. Due to rising energy costs and the increasing share of renewable energy, further aspects like energy efficiency, decentralized energy production, intelligent communication of energy producers, consumers and storage provider (smart grid) as well as energy flexibility become more and more important. Even utilizing the price fluctuations on the European energy exchange to save money and reduce maintaining capacities, seems possible.

Opportunities and open question

By integrating approaches to increase sustainability, cost reduction, productivity gains and sales opportunities come along.

Production processes, for example, could involve energy consumption characteristics. Easy wins could be achieved by identifying big energy consumers and preventing their peak loads from summing up by shifting them (left diagram of figure 2). The objective is a co-optimization of processes with controlled energy consumption curve. Via peak shaving, a reduction of energy buffer capacities in the power grid can be achieved which will automatically lead to lower energy costs. This applies mainly for enterprises that are charged for their commodity and capacity price.

Energy-intensive enterprises with a flexible production on the other hand, may try to shift their peak loads to times when costs are at their low. By trading energy capacities via e.g. the EEX (European Energy Exchange market), costs can be minimized. Especially with the increase of the share of renewable energies in the energy mix, more flexible energy consumption strategies grow in importance. Consumers can concentrate their energy intensive activities to sunny and windy day times and thus plan according to weather forecasts. With the support of AI technologies, multi-parameter optimization algorithms can be realized to ensure that production goals are met, costs remain low and the carbon footprint reaches a minimum. These mentioned strategies are further described in figure 2.

Figure 2: Energy flexibility in a nutshell – quick wins by avoiding expensive peaks vs. complex full scope optimization

However, numerous questions remain to be answered. First of all, how large would be the benefit? Does the investment pay off in the end? What solutions would bring the biggest effect and where are the break-even points?

Second, a decision needs to be taken where to place such a topic. Is it part of the enterprise, factory or edge/machine planning level? Or is a separate module in the overall digital manufacturing architecture necessary? What would be the priority – when and on what intensity would the system be allowed to intervene in production processes, e.g. deferring or reducing maximum power?

Third, what infrastructure is needed for such an approach? What kind of sensors, data and degree of digitalization is needed? Can machines be retrofitted and integrated into existing platforms? What kind of software systems of the digital factory would be necessary for such an energy monitoring approach?

The Capgemini approach for the green lean digital intelligent industry

To address the above-mentioned questions, Capgemini launched a partnership with a renowned research institute to combine their complementary key skills. Insights from research studies and early PoCs can be enriched by Capgemini’s identified market needs, customer pain points and use cases within the manufacturing industry as well as its experience in bringing new technologies into real digital production systems. Together a strategy was developed to utilize the research driven insights with the scaling and implementational skills as well as the digital manufacturing know-how. In this context, a key question is how to integrate Green Lean Digital Applications into manufacturing intelligent operations platforms. Different building blocks of the digital manufacturing reference architecture are impacted, e.g. MES, APO, Asset Management, Digital Twin Simulations, etc.

Figure 3 depicts one approach how future energy flexibility solutions might be considered in future landscapes.

Figure 3: Capgemini architecture proposal to integrate an energy flexibility software module inside production control

Tomorrow is now: Needs meet capabilities

Rising sea levels, extreme weather events like the recent bushfires in Australia, earthquakes, heavy thunderstorms and melting ice in the artic are just few examples on how the climate crisis is affecting our daily life.

The urgency to act is growing day by day and the general public is calling for action. Finally, the worldwide economy is also starting to take the crisis serious. Failing to act bears unforeseeable risks. Climate activists are putting immense pressure on polluting or ignorant enterprises, managers and politicians. Pioneer Tesla has just overtaken Volkswagens place as second most valuable car manufacturing company worldwide and Blackrock is refusing environmentally harmful investments. The manufacturing industry must start using its powerful position to positively contribute to this change even when regulators are lagging behind as Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz SE, said recently at the world economic forum in Davos.

We as Capgemini see ourselves as architects for a positive future. We want to do our best to use the opportunity to influence future climate change by cutting and mitigating our and our clients’ energy consumption and CO2 footprint. This way we ensure a livable future for next generations. Driven by data, intelligent industry provides the required capabilities to ensure that vital responsible and sustainable use of our ressources.

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Markus Hartmann is a Business Technology & Solutions Consultant in Capgemini.
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