Last week I enjoyed visiting LiveWorx 2023 on behalf of the PLM Global Green Alliance. PTC had invited us to understand their sustainability ambitions and meet with the relevant people from PTC, partners, customers and several of my analyst friends. It felt like a reunion.
In addition, I used the opportunity to understand better their Velocity SaaS offering with OnShape and Arena. The almost 4-days event, with approximately 5000 attendees, was massive and well-organized.
So many people were excited that this was again an in-person event after four years.
With PTC’s broad product portfolio, you could easily have a full agenda for the whole event, depending on your interests.
I was personally motivated that I had a relatively full schedule focusing purely on Sustainability, leaving all these other beautiful end-to-end concepts for another time.
Here are some of my observations
Jim Heppelman’s keynote
The primary presentation of such an event is the keynote from PTC’s CEO. This session allows you to understand the company’s key focus areas.
My takeaways:
- Need for Speed: Software-driven innovation, or as Jim said, Software is eating the BOM, reminding me of my recent blog post: The Rise and Fall of the BOM. Here Jim was referring to the integration with ALM (CodeBeamer) and IoT to have full traceability of products. However, including Software also requires agile ways of working.
- Need for Speed: Agile ways of working – the OnShape and Arena offerings are examples of agile working methods. A SaaS solution is easy to extend with suppliers or other stakeholders. PTC calls this their Velocity offering, typical Systems of Engagement, and I spoke later with people working on this topic. More in the future.
- Need for Speed: Model-based digital continuity – a theme I have discussed in my blog post too. Here Jim explains the interaction between Windchill and ServiceMax, both Systems of Record for product definition and Operation.
- Environmental Sustainability: introducing Catherine Kniker, PTC’s Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer, announcing that PTC has committed to Science Based Targets, pledging near-term emissions reductions and long-term net-zero targets – see image below and more on Sustainability in the next section.
- A further investment in a SaaS architecture, announcing CREO+ as a SaaS solution supporting dynamic multi-user collaboration (a System of Engagement)
- A further investment in the partnership with Ansys fits the needs of a model-based future where modeling and simulation go hand in hand.
You can watch the full session Path to the Future: Products in the Age of Transformation here.
Sustainability
The PGGA spoke with Dave Duncan and James Norman last year about PTC’s sustainability initiatives. Remember: PLM and Sustainability: talking with PTC. Therefore, Klaus Brettschneider and I were happy to meet Dave and James in person just before the event and align on understanding what’s coming at PTC.
We agreed there is no “sustainability super app”; it is more about providing an open, digital infrastructure to connect data sources at any time of the product lifecycle, supporting decision-making and analysis. It is all about reliable data.
Product Sustainability 101
On Tuesday, Dave Duncan gave a great introductory session, Product Sustainability 101, addressing Business Drivers and Technical Opportunities. Dave started by explaining the business context aiming at greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction based on science-based targets, describing the content of Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.
The image above, which came back in several presentations later that week, nicely describes the mapping of lifecycle decisions and operations in the context of the GHG protocol.
Design for Sustainability (DfS)
On Wednesday, I started with a session moderated by James Norman titled Design for Sustainability: Harnessing Innovation for a Resilient Future. The panel consisted of Neil D’Souza (CEO Makersite), Tim Greiner (MD Pure Strategies), Francois Lamy (SVP Product Management PTC) and Asheen Phansey (Director ESG & Sustainability at PagerDuty). You can find the topic discussed below:
Some of the notes I took:
- No specific PLM modules are needed, LCA needs to become an additional practice for companies, and they rely on a connected infrastructure.
- Where to start? First, understand the current baseline based on data collection – what is your environmental impact? Next, decide where to start
- The importance of Design for Service – many companies design products for easy delivery, not for service. Being able to service products better will extend their lifetime, therefore reducing their environmental impact (manufacturing/decommissioning)
- There Is a value chain for carbon data. In addition, suppliers significantly impact reaching net zero, as many OEMs have an Assembly To Order process, and most of the emissions are done during part manufacturing.
DfS: an example from Cummins
Next, on Wednesday, I attended the session from David Genter from Cummins, who presented their Design for Sustainability (DfS) project.
Dave started by sharing their 2030 sustainability goals:
- On Facilities and Operations: A reduction of 50 % of GHG emissions, reducing water usage by 30 %, reducing waste by 25 % and reducing organic compound emissions by 50%
- Reducing Scope 3 emissions for new products by 25%
- In general, reducing Scope 3 emissions by 55M metric tons.
The benefits for products were documented using a standardized scorecard (example below) to ensure the benefits are real and not based on wishful thinking.
Many motivated people wanted to participate in the project, and the ultimate result demonstrated that DfS has both business value for Cummins and the environment.
The project has been very well described in this whitepaper: How Cummins Made Changes to Optimize Product Designs for the Environment – a recommended case study to read.
Tangible Strategies for Improving Product Sustainability
The session was a dialogue between Catherine Kniker and Dave Duncan, discussing the strategies to move forward with Sustainability.
They reiterated the three areas where we as a PLM community can improve: Material choice and usage, Addressing Energy Emissions and Reducing Waste. And it is worth addressing them all, as you can see below – it is not only about carbon reduction.
It was an informative dialogue going through the different aspects of where we, as an engineering/ PLM community, can contribute. You can watch their full dialog here: Tangible Strategies for Improving Product Sustainability.
Conclusion
It was encouraging to see that at such an event as LiveWorx, you could learn about Sustainability and discuss Sustainability with the audience and PTC partners. And as I mentioned before, we need to learn to measure (data-driven / reliable data), and we need to be able to work in a connected infrastructure (digital thread) to allow design, simulation, validation and feedback to go hand in hand. It requires adapting a business strategy, not just a tactical solution. With the PLM Global Green Alliance, we are looking forward to following up on these.
NOTE: PTC covered the expenses associated with my participation in this event but did not in any way influence the content of this post – I made my tour fully independent through the conference and got encouraged by all the conversations I had.
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