Back to Work, Back to Reality

After the holidays, we return to work with greater urgency. The big wildfires show that climate change is real.

While addressing climate change requires a long-term vision and the will to move away from fossil fuels, another problem is also emerging: the limits of our planet:

The increasing scarcity of the resources needed to build and maintain the products we use.

Addressing these challenges requires a new approach for both manufacturing companies and consumers.

The heavy, carbon-intensive linear take-make-dispose approach to products needs to be replaced by a systemic approach that accounts for carbon emissions across manufacturing and use, optimizes business models to minimize resource waste, and incorporates thresholds to safeguard biodiversity.

The challenging transformation upon us is often evoked as a twin transition of “Sustainability and Digitalization”. Image below from my 2023 presentation at the PLM Roadmap/PDT conference.


Our last PGGA interview with Adrian Segens from Cambridge Design Partnership addressed Design for Sustainability.

As a reminder: Have a look at our last PGGA interview to get ready for this episode: Design for Sustainability: The PLM Green Global Alliance talks with Adrian Segens.

 

The INCOSE Sustainability Workgroup

We were extremely happy to connect with the INCOSE Sustainability working group, particularly the Sustainability Together team, as it is like our PGGA: a group of experts with diverse backgrounds who have begun addressing sustainability with a systemic approach grounded in Systems Engineering and in modeling a circular and regenerative economy.

We spoke with Hamza Bassam, Trainer, Consultant, Coach and Author at OOSE. and Kai Constantini, Consultant, Trainer, Facilitator and Art Thinking Expert, both with a broad interest and work on sustainability-related topics

Enjoy the 37-minute interview below:

You can download the slides presented (and more) HERE

 

What we have learned

  1. The Essential Role of Systems Engineering (SE) and MBSE: Systems engineering provides a holistic perspective that is crucial for sustainability, as traditional linear processes (design, produce, use, retire) are insufficient to address the complexity of a circular economy and the complex techno-socio-ecological phenomena such as the “Rebound” effect.
  2. Shifting from Eco-Efficiency to Regenerative Design: The session highlights a move beyond “eco-efficiency”—which may simply make a bad process more efficient—toward “eco-effectiveness” and regenerative design.
  3. The Need for New Mental Models and Proven Profitability: A significant barrier to sustainability is the current business mental model, which often prioritizes short-term profit over long-term regenerative practices
  4. The “Sustainable Together” Open-Source Project: a virtual lab to test these concepts, also open for non-INCOSE members (see link in the next paragraph) – a group similar to our PGGA.
  5. Leveraging AI and Data-Driven Environments: Future sustainability efforts will increasingly rely on AI and automated agents to handle complex tasks like Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), which are currently cumbersome for organizations. They will also account for Biodiversity data capture to inform our decision-making process across business and multiple socio-economic layers

 

Want to learn more?

 

Conclusion

The INCOSE Sustainability WG and the PLM Green Global are a perfect match to address sustainability topics. While the PGGA focuses primarily on PLM-related topics, sharing information and educating the field, the INCOSE Sustainability working group enables people from around the globe to discuss and apply these topics on real projects.

To strengthen our relationship, Hamsa Bassam has agreed to join the PGGA core team, and Jos Voskuil will be actively involved in the INCOSE Sustainability Together project starting in Q4 2026.

Feel free to join us too!

 

 

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