Data as a driver for sustainability in product engineering
Under the motto ‘Data-driven Industry - Shaping a New Era’, industry and science presented pioneering solutions for digital and sustainable industrial value creation at the Hannover Messe. At the joint stand of the Plattform Industrie 4.0, leading projects presented their solutions for so-called data ecosystems - systems in which companies can share data and use this data to offer innovative products. One of the highlights presented was the “Decide4ECO” research project, which Paderborn University is realising with partners from industry. It is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
The “Decide4ECO” project – funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) with €7.3 million – is all about the urgent need to take sustainability goals into account at an early stage of product engineering. A significant amount of the environmental impact is already determined at this stage. The project supports companies in making predictive and sustainable decisions. If, for example, a car boot cover is fitted with a motor, energy consumption can no longer be avoided later on, unlike with a manually operated cover. A particular focus is on the data required for this. For comprehensive sustainability analyses, data from the entire supply chain must be brought together. Who supplies the motor and where is it installed? How much energy does it need? Can it be repaired if necessary? Decide4ECO is based on the Manufacturing-X shared data ecosystem, in which information is provided in the form of digital product passports via open interfaces and standards and supplemented by predictive and AI-based analyses.
The partners in the Decide4ECO research project demonstrated their digital solutions for the first time at Hannover Messe (31.03-04.04.). The focus is on the evolution of product lifecycle management systems - or ‘PLM’ for short - by integrating data from data ecosystems. The process begins in the early engineering phase. Engineers use digitally supported material evaluation to better understand and optimise the ecological balance of a product in the development phase. The environmental impact can already be assessed when selecting individual materials in the concept phase. Product Carbon Footprint, ease of disassembly, proportion of recycled materials - such sustainability criteria can then be taken into account as early as the procurement process. This makes it easier to select suppliers that meet both economic and environmental requirements. These extended functionalities are based on data from the entire value chain. Standardised interfaces enable traceability and interaction of sustainability data along the entire product life cycle. Technologies such as the Digital Product Passport have been integrated into PLM tools, enabling the seamless exchange of essential information. The technological development of the PLM systems is being driven forward by IT partners CONTACT, PROSTEP and NEXPIRIT in collaboration with Professor Iris Gräßler's Product Creation workgroup at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute (HNI) at Paderborn University. Together, extensions for PLM systems such as CONTACT Elements and Siemens Teamcenter were designed. The solutions developed are being utilised in application-oriented case studies at the industrial partners BOS, Hadi-Plast and Sennheiser.
The Paderborn team is helping to drive forward the sustainable transformation - taking into account the practical challenges faced by companies. The focus is on developing innovative approaches to create resilient and sustainable value creation networks. Based on a system model, data from PLM systems is shared in data rooms via innovative PLM-connectors. ‘Depending on requirements, key figures such as the Product Carbon Footprint, the recyclate quota or water usage can be calculated and provided flexibly,’ says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler, describing the flexibility that companies gain from the new approach.
The presentation of the demonstrators at the Hannover Messe trade fair provided an insightful illustration of how the solutions developed in the Decide4ECO project help to make companies not only more sustainable, but also more competitive. From procurement and material selection to traceability in the product life cycle, the technologies developed offer concrete approaches for combining ecological responsibility with economic efficiency. The IT solutions and methods developed in the project are now being trialled in industrial practice. Application partners are using the innovative approaches to make their products more sustainable and to participate in data ecosystems such as Manufacturing-X in the long term. In addition, the research results flow into teaching at the HNI - an example of how students ultimately also benefit from practice-orientated research in mechanical engineering.