It has been busy recently in the context of the PLM Global Green Alliances (PGGA) series: PLM and Sustainability, where we interview PLM-related software vendors, discussing their sustainability mission and offering.

We talked with SAP, Autodesk, and Dassault Systèmes and last week with Sustaira. Now the discussion was with the team from Aras.  Aras is known as a non-traditional PLM player, having the following slogan on their website:

It is a great opening statement for our discussion. Let’s discover more.

Aras

The discussion was with Patrick Willemsen, Director of Technical Community EMEA and Matthias Fohrer, Director of Global Alliances EMEA at Aras. It was an interesting interview; as we discussed, Aras focuses on the digital thread, connecting data from all sources with an infrastructure designed to support a company in its PLM domain.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, PLM and Sustainability  – if we want to work efficiently on Sustainability, we need to have a data-driven and connected infrastructure.

And this made this discussion interesting to follow– please look/listen to the 30 minutes conversation below.

Slides shown during the interview and additional company information can be found HERE.

What we have learned

There were several interesting points in our discussion where we were aligned; first of all, the sustainable value of bringing your solutions to the cloud.

So we discussed the topic of Sustainability and the cloud, and it was interesting to read this week McKinsey’s post The green IT revolution: A blueprint for CIOs to combat climate change containing this quote:

“Moving to the cloud has more impact than optimizing data centers”– the article is quite applicable for Aras.

Next, I liked the message that it is all about collaboration between different parties.

As Matthias mentioned, nobody can do it on their own. According to Aras’ studies, 70% see Sustainability as an important area to improve themselves; nobody can do it on his own. Partnerships are crucial, as well as digital connections between the stakeholders. It is a plea for systems thinking in a connected manner, connecting to existing material libraries.

 

The third point we were aligned with is that PLM and Sustainability are a learning journey. As Patrick explained, it is about embracing the circular economy and learning step by step.

<– Click on the image to enlarge.

 

Want to learn more?

Aras has published several white papers and surveys and hosted webinars related to Sustainability. Here are a few of them:

Aras Survey Challenges 2022: From Sustainability to Digitalization

White Paper: The Circular Economy as a Model for the Future

Webinar: Greener Business, PLM, Traceability, and Beyond

Webinar: How PLM Paves the Way for Sustainability

Blog: The Circular Economy as a Model for the Future

 

Conclusions

It is clear that Aras provides an infrastructure for a connected enterprise. They combine digital PLM capabilities with the option to extend their reach by supporting sustainability-related processes, like systems thinking and lifecycle assessments. And as they mention, no one can do it alone; we depend on collaboration and learning for all stakeholders.

On more week to go – join us if you can – click here