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In our series, the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) talks with software vendors and service partners, continuing to interview them and discuss their contributions and insights toward a more sustainable future.
This trend is already very noticeable. The term sustainable is becoming less associated with the environment or the planet. More and more companies embed environmentally friendly activities in their business processes.
A few years ago, the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) or the Sustainability team sat in a separate silo within the organization. Just as we had the CDO (Chief Digital Officer) ten years ago, the separate CFO role is now less needed.
Great news, showing that the business matures!
Back to the interviews
If you have time to study and read, look at this development documented over time. Our interviews are on the PLM Green Global Alliance website, or you can watch them on our YouTube channel: @PLM_Global_Green_Alliance.
This time we have an interesting newcomer to the series: CONTACT Software, represented by Sebastian Weber, responsible for their sustainable innovation. As usual, Mark Reisig and Jos Voskuil ask the questions.
CONTACT Software
CONTACT Software is probably a niche player in the PLM domain for many people, as it has mainly operated from the DACH Länder (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).
Learn more about the company and their customers in Jos’s blog post related to the Open World 2026 conference in Bonn here: The week after CONTACT Open World 2026
Now, with Sebastian Weber, we zoomed in on sustainability – enjoy the 27-minute discussion here:
What we have learned
- Horizontal Integration Across PLM (Not an Isolated Silo): Sustainability is treated as a horizontal capability embedded across the entire modular CONTACT Elements platform—from early innovation and design to manufacturing and service—rather than being isolated as a standalone module or departmental silo.
- Sustainability Information as the Data Anchor for the Green Digital Thread: Sustainability Information within the CONTACT Elements platform connects environmental data to products, components, materials, and lifecycle stages while preserving sources, methods, and assessment scope. It provides a traceable foundation for BOM-based calculations, design comparisons, Digital Product Passports, and circularity assessments across the product lifecycle
- Automated Calculations and Bill of Materials (BOM) Roll-ups: Organizations are shifting away from manual Excel spreadsheets toward automated Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) calculations and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) – digital transformation in action.
- Standardized Data Exchange and Digital Product Passports (DPP): While widespread adoption of Digital Product Passports is still emerging (driven initially by upcoming battery passport regulations), companies are actively adopting standardized exchange frameworks
- Leveraging AI for Rapid Design Scenarios: Looking ahead, an integrated intelligence layer will help engineers evaluate design alternatives, assess supplier options, run PCF calculation scenarios, and uncover unlinked data across product structures to broaden context during design decisions.
- Shop-Floor Energy Tracking and the Shift Toward Circularity: The platform extends sustainability into manufacturing by comparing planned vs. actual shop-floor energy usage. Looking forward, CONTACT Software is expanding capabilities around circular economy strategies—such as refurbishment, component reuse, and recycling—to help companies build valid business cases for circular business models.
Want to learn more?
- CONTACT Software’s offering on Sustainability Reporting
- The Decide4Eco project mentioned during the interview
- Sustainability – CONTACT Software Blog
Conclusion
It was a pleasure to work with CONTACT Software again, this time with Sebastian Weber, their Senior Research Scientist, focusing on sustainability. What we appreciated most was the honest conversation – we didn’t paint a picture of a world that doesn’t exist, but discussed what is actually happening in the field and what companies can realistically do today. This attitude is characteristic of CONTACT Software. They are not the company with the biggest marketing budget or the loudest voice in the PLM market. They are a company of people who do things – and then talk about them, which is precisely why this episode is worth watching and reading.
The conference is sold out – see you there – or read my next blog post the weekend after …..
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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?
- Link to the Sustainability Together project on GitHub: Sustainability Together
- Link to the INCOSE Natural Systems Working Group
- The 9R-framework or the 10R-framework from Potting
- The Donella Meadows project – Limits to growth
- More info about: Art Thinking and the Improbable method
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!
Erik Rieger and Matthew Sullivian have been active last year, organizing a workgroup related to Design for Sustainability, as you might recall from earlier posts: Towards a shared definition of Design for Sustainability.
As part of this exploration, Erik Rieger and Jos Voskuil had a conversation with Adrian Segens, an experienced professional at Cambridge Design Partnership and a thought leader in packaging, recycling, and sustainability, contributing to industry discussions, reports, and LinkedIn posts.
For that reason, we were happy to record an interview with Adrian, discussing his background in sustainability, the connection to businesses and the concept of Product As A Service – a must for a circular economy.
Enjoy the 36-minute interview below:
The images presented during this recording can be found HERE.
What we learned
- Sustainability is an Economic Imperative: the effort to sustain a “working and livable economy and society” for a global population of eight billion people. The transition to a circular economy is an economic necessity because current resource use and climate emissions are tied directly to how we make and consume products.
- The shift to ‘Product as a Service’ (PaaS) is essential: Manufacturers must retain ownership of material flows—a cornerstone of circularity and a sustainable economic model. This approach replaces the unpredictability of one-time sales with steady, predictable revenue, long-term customer value, and a reduced reliance on virgin resources.
- Recycling is a Low Priority on the “Ladder of 10”: A major misconception is that the circular economy is primarily about recycling. In reality, recycling is ranked eighth in a ten-stage hierarchy of circularity. Higher-value strategies include rethinking the business model (the second step), reusing products (the most preferred method), and refurbishing equipment.
- Digitalization is essential for Scaling: The circular economy cannot scale without digitalization, as we need full traceability of materials and outcomes. Technologies like Digital Product Passports (DPP) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are necessary to provide the end-to-end visibility required to track every product in the field, manage complex return logistics, and collect metadata to improve future designs.
Want to learn more?
Adrian recommends that we dive deeper following these links:
- Learn more about Cambridge Design Partnership and its activities.
- Follow and connect with Adrian Segens on LinkedIn, and reach out with your questions.
- Learn more about WEF’s Circular Car Initiative as a great vision of what a circular future looks like.
- Watch this documentary about Adrien’s hero: Dieter Rams.
Conclusion
We all agree that the transition to a circular economy is an economic necessity, requiring a fundamental shift toward product-as-a-service models. Understanding that product design is the most effective lever for reducing environmental impact, prioritizing high-value actions like reuse and refurbishment over recycling.
For us as a PLM community, the circular economy cannot function at scale without digitalization. Success relies on end-to-end visibility, enabled by modern, data-driven PLM infrastructures, to manage material flows and leverage data for continuous improvement.
We have work to do
Do you ever think about where we’ll be ten years from now? I’ve noticed I ask that question more and more these days. Probably because I have the time, not being involved anymore in day-to-day business and alerts.
Interestingly, we tend to assume that long-term thinking is someone else’s job — left to business management and governments. Roadmaps, strategies, and vision stories have always been part of my work with companies.
And yet, the dominant reality right now is a dramatic focus on the short term — driven by populism on one side and quarterly profit targets on the other. The result is a collective inability to make decisions that matter for the next decade, let alone the next generation.
The current war in the Middle East has made something painfully visible that many of us already knew: we are dangerously dependent on fossil fuels.
Around 40 percent of global shipping is tied to fossil fuel supply chains. Countries that have not invested in energy independence are now feeling that vulnerability acutely.
The energy transition is not just an environmental ambition — it is a geopolitical necessity.
- China understood this years ago and has been investing accordingly.
- AI data centers are now one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand, and even in Texas, they are building wind and solar parks to keep that energy demand under their own control.
- And Cuba — pushed by American sanctions — has been forced to innovate into wind and solar energy, with Chinese support. These are not coincidences.
They are signals that working on an energy transition makes you less vulnerable!
A real “burning platform”!
While we see burning platforms in the Middle East, we are also in a classic “burning platform” situation — a phrase from the world of change management that captures a simple truth: people only change when staying the same becomes more costly than changing.
It’s a depressing observation about human nature — and one I keep coming back to whenever I see exciting possibilities on the horizon that we simply refuse to act on.
The fossil fuel dependency is one burning platform, willingly used at the moment by those countries and companies that are benefiting from this industry.
The downside is that the path towards a more circular economy — reducing waste, rethinking production, designing for longevity — is equally urgent and equally neglected.
This is precisely why the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) exists — to keep these conversations alive and focus on the topics that support a sustainable future.
Four weeks ago, I launched a survey among our new LinkedIn group members. Due to a low response rate, I extended it to the whole group two weeks later.
The takeaway? Even within this community, the energy transition and sustainability don’t appear to feel like a burning platform — something demanding urgent action.
PLM Green Global Alliance survey
A quick overview of the responses — given the low number of replies, treat this as an indication rather than a statistically solid survey.
Although we launched the PGGA as a truly GLOBAL alliance — with core team members from both the US and Europe — the membership skews heavily toward the EMEA region. The political climate and culture of each region explain a lot about that.
It’s encouraging to see that most people joined out of personal interest, with professional motivations also playing a role. That tells us the PGGA needs to keep its focus on sharing real experiences — not just theory.
LCA (Life Cycle Analysis or Life Cycle Assessments) stands out as a strong area of interest — and the good news is that several of our core team members are actively working on it. Don’t hesitate to post your questions to the group.
On the Digital Product Passport (DPP), we’re planning an interview and/or webinar. The DPP is a great example of a topic that’s as much about digitizing product information as it is about methodology.
As you may have seen the post The show must go on – but will it be sustainable? last week. Erik Rieger and Matthew Sullivan, the Design for Sustainability team, are actively looking for more participants to help shape guidance in this area.
The answers illustrate that for most people, working on sustainability activities is (still) not part of their daily mission.
Question 5 allowed the participants to vote for topics of interest, and we can summarize the answers as follows:
- Understand what PLM solution providers are offering (we continue with our interviews)
- Discussing how to determine the carbon impact/LCA in the full scope, not only in the design scope and how various platforms contribute to it in the various lifecycle stages.
- Design for Sustainability guidance and info
- The role of PLM and AI in the context of sustainability
Since the survey was anonymous, we can’t link answers to specific regions. But we’re aware that in some countries, polarization has made certain topics off-limits — either by mandate or out of fear of a difficult working atmosphere.
The last two questions were about potential involvement for the PGGA from the people answering the survey. 3 people responded positively to support the PGGA in action.
Within the PGGA, everyone is welcome to share their perspective — with respect for those who see it differently. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about the dialogue, and about finding paths forward to a future that’s sustainable not just for the planet, but for businesses and the people within them.
A low response or apathy?
The survey results are interesting on their own — but when you combine them with the low response rate, they say something more: even in communities that care, mobilizing action is hard.
Are we too busy with the short term, or have we become apathetic to what is happening around us and have the feeling our efforts do not matter?
On that last point, I keep thinking of Hannah Arendt — the German-American historian and philosopher who lived from October 1906 till December 1975.
Her famous book, published after the Second World War, is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), an alarming book if you read it in today’s context.
My favorite quote from this book:
Written in the context of the Holocaust, it explained how the indifference of ordinary people allowed atrocities to unfold. Arendt warns against moral detachment. Staying informed and engaged takes effort — but it’s the effort that matters.
Today, she might write:
“Evil thrives on social media, and cannot exist without it.”
To conclude
So what can we do? The conclusion is simple, even if the execution is not directly possible: don’t just watch it burn. Every one of us has a space of influence — in our companies, in our communities, in our professional networks. The energy transition, the circular economy, the push for longer-term thinking — none of these will happen because a government issued a directive or a CEO signed a strategy paper. They happen because individuals within their sphere of influence decide to make them happen.
Where are you standing?
Respond with a “like” if you care!
December is the last month when daylight is getting shorter in the Netherlands, and with the end of the year approaching, this is the time to reflect on 2025.
For me, it has been an interesting year, and I hope it has been similar for you. I started 2025 with this post: My 2025 focus, sharing the topics that would drive my primary intentions—a quick walk through some of these topics and what to reflect on what I have learned.
Fewer blog posts
It was already clear that AI-generated content was going to drown the blogging space. The result: Original content became less and less visible, and a self-reinforcing amount of general messages reduced further excitement.
As I have no commercial drive to be visible, I will continue to write posts only when relevant to personal situations or ideas, with the intention of being shared and discussed with the readers of my posts – approximate 26 / year.
Therefore, if you are still interested in content that has not been generated with AI, I recommend subscribing to my blog and interacting directly with me through the comments, either on LinkedIn or via a direct message.
More podcast recordings
Together with the Share PLM podcast team, Beatriz Gonzales and Maria Morris, we enjoyed talking with a large variety of people active in PLM, all having their personal stories related to PLM to share—each episode ending with an experience to share and a desired takeaway for the listeners. We did it with great pleasure and learned from each episode.
You can find all the recordings from 2025 (Season 3) here.
In Season 4, we want to add the C-level perspective to our PLM and People podcast discussions.
#DataCentric or #PeopleCentric ?
It was PeopleCentric first at the beginning of the year, with the Share PLM Summit in Jerez and DataCentric in the second half of the year, with activities connected to the PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe conference in Paris.
In case you missed the excitement and lessons learned, here they are:
- The weekend after the Share PLM Summit 2025
- A week after Shaping the Future of PLM – No time to lose!
- A very long week after PLM Roadmap / PDT Europe 2025
Both topics will become even more critical due to the impact of AI tools on our day-to-day work.
Sustainability?
Already an uncomfortable term for some of us at the beginning of 2025, it has become one of the best-kept secrets of 2025. Where traditional countries and companies revert to their short-term bad habits – optimize shareholders value, there are also forward-looking enterprises that are actively rephrasing their sustainable strategies as risk mitigation strategies with the awareness that adaptation is inevitable. Better start early than too late – not a typical human strategy.
In case you are interested, I recommend you read and listen to:
And now it is time to discuss AI.
With all the investments and marketing related to AI, it is unavoidable to neglect it. For sure, it is a hype, but I believe that we are into something revolutionary for society, like the impact of the industrial revolution on our society 150 years ago.
However, there are also the same symptoms of the .com-hype 25 years ago.
Who are going to be the winners? Currently, the hardware, datacenter and energy providers, not the AI-solution providers. But this can change.
Let’s look into some of the potential benefits.
Individual efficiency?
Many of the current AI tools allow individuals to perform better at first sight. Suddenly, someone who could not write understandable (email) messages, draw images or create structured presentations now has a better connection with others—the question to ask is whether these improved efficiencies will also result in business benefits for an organization.
Looking back at the introduction of email with Lotus Notes, for example, email repositories became information siloes and did not really improve the intellectual behavior of people.
Later, Microsoft took over the dominant role as the office software provider with enhanced search and storage capabilities, but still, most of the individual knowledge remained hidden or inaccurate as it missed the proper context.
As a result of this, some companies tried to reduce the usage of individual emails and work more and more in communities with a specific context. Also, due to COVID and improved connectivity, this led to the success of Teams. And now with Copilot embedded in the Microsoft suite, I am curious to learn what companies perceive as measurable business benefits.
The chatbot?
For many companies, the chatbot is a way to reduce the number of people active in customer relations, either sales or services. I believe that, combined with the usage of LLMs, an improvement in customer service can be achieved. Or at least the perception, as so far I do not recall any interaction with a chatbot to be specific enough to solve my problem.
The risks with AI?
Now I may sound like a boomer who started focusing on knowledge management 25 years ago – exploring tacit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge a real expert has by combining different areas of expertise and understanding what makes sense.
Could tacit knowledge be replaced by an external model that gives you all the (correct?) answers?
In verifiable situations, we know when the model is hallucinating – but what if the scope is beyond our understanding? Would we still rely on AI, and could AI be manipulated in ways that we lose touch with the real facts?
Already, the first research papers are coming out warning of reduced human cognitive performance, e.g., this paper: Beware of Metacognitive Laziness: Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Learning, Motivation, Processes, and Performance.
Combined with laziness (a typical human behavior – system 1), these results made me think of a statement made by Sean Illing:
“People love the truth, but they hate facts.”
A statement highly relevant to what we see happening now with social media – we do not think or research deep enough anymore, we select the facts that we like and consider them our truth.
What happens in our PLM domain?
In the PLM domain, companies are indeed reluctant to use LLMs directly, where some of them use RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to feed the LLM with a relevant context.
Still, the answers require human interpretation, as you cannot avoid hallucinations in your product lifecycle management processes.
As long as the results are based on inconsistent data sources that lack the relevant context, the answers are of low quality.
Meanwhile, every vendor in the PLM space is now offering AI-agents, most of the time within their own portfolio space. The ultimate dream is polygot agents (who are buying them / who are developing them) that can work together and create a new type of agility beyond traditional workflows. An interesting article in this context comes from Oleg Shilovitsky: Why Does PLM Need Task Re-Engineering Before It Can Have AI?
Still, these potential “quick” fixes create a risk for companies in the long term. Buying AI tools does not fix the foundation that is based on legacy.
In particular, related to the Shape the Future of PLM – Together workshop in Paris on Nov 4th, the consensus was that companies need to invest in understanding and implementing domain-specific ontologies and semantic models to provide a data-driven infrastructure that allows AI to make accurate decisions or valid recommendations.
You can read the summary of the event and recommendations here: Accelerating the Future of PLM & ALM on the ArrowHead’s website.
You can also read this post from Ole Olesen-Bagneux: Why will 2026 be the year of the ontologist?
Although the topics in the workshop might look “too advanced” for your company, they are crucial to transform into a long-term, sustainable, data-driven, model-based, and AI-supported enterprise.
Somewhere, you have to cross the chasm from documents to data in context.
Being busy is not an excuse, as you can also read in Thomas Nys’s LinkedIn post: Your Engineers spend 40 % of their time maintaining yesterday’s shortcuts. And you’re wondering why your AI initiative isn’t moving faster. I loved the image.
Human Resources?
The AI revolution will have an impact on society, and it is up to us individuals how well we adapt.
Remember, the first 50 – 100 years of the Industrial Revolution made only a few people extremely rich. James Watt, the Rothschild family, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Alfred Krupp and the Schneider family became so rich due to ownership of factories and machinery, the control of raw materials (coal, iron, oil), the use of new technology (steam power, mechanization) combined with access to cheap labor and weak labor laws and limited competition early on.
Most humans moved into urbanized areas to become nothing but cheap resources, even children. And remember, many of us are still human resources!
A new conspiracy?
In 2016, Ida Auken’s lecture at the WEF created traction during COVID among people who believed in conspiracies. Her story focused on a more circular economy with respect for the Earth’s resources. The story was framed into the message:
“In the future, you will own nothing and be happy.”
The conspiracy theorist believed all their possessions would be taken away by the elite in the long term.
I want to conclude with a new message for these conspiracy theorists active on X or other discussion fora:
“In the future, you will know nothing, and you won’t be aware enough to care.”
Conclusion
2026 is going to be an interesting year, where we cannot allow ourselves to sit still and watch what is happening. Active participation is more challenging but also more rewarding than being a consumer. In May 2026, I hope to meet some of you at the Share PLM Summit in Jerez and share the human side, followed by the PDM Roadmap/PDT Europe conference in Q4 in Gothenburg, where we will catch up on the technical and data side.
I am wishing you all a wise and happy/healthy 2026
On November 11th, we celebrated our 5th anniversary of the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) with a webinar where ♻️ Jos Voskuil (me) interviewed the five other PGGA core team members about developments and experiences in their focus domain, potentially allowing for a broader discussion.
In our discussion, we focused on the trends and future directions of the PLM Green Global Alliance, emphasizing the intersection of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and sustainability.
Probably, November 11th was not the best day for broad attendance, and therefore, we hope that the recording of this webinar will allow you to connect and comment on this post.
Enjoy the discussion – watch it, or listen to it, as this time we did not share any visuals in the debate. Still, we hope to get your reflections and feedback on the interview related to the LinkedIn post.
The discussion centered on the trends and future directions of the PLM Green Global Alliance, with a focus on the intersection of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and sustainability.
Short Summary
♻️ Rich McFall shared his motivations for founding the alliance, highlighting the need for a platform that connects individuals committed to sustainability and addresses the previously limited discourse on PLM’s role in promoting environmental responsibility. He noted a significant variance in vendor engagement with sustainability, indicating that while some companies are proactive, others remain hesitant.
The conversation delved into the growing awareness and capabilities of how to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with ♻️ Klaus Brettschneider, followed by the importance of integrating sustainability into PLM strategies, with ♻️ Mark Reisig discussing the ongoing energy transition and the growing investments in green technologies, particularly in China and Europe.
♻️ Evgeniya Burimskaya raised concerns about implementing circular economy principles in the aerospace industry, emphasizing the necessity of lifecycle analysis and the upcoming digital product passport requirements. The dialogue also touched on the Design for Sustainability initiative, led by ♻️ Erik Rieger, which aims to embed sustainability into the product design phase, necessitating a cultural shift in engineering education to prioritize sustainability.
Conclusion
We concluded with understanding the urgent realities of climate change, but also advocating for an optimistic mindset in the face of challenges – it is perhaps not as bad as it seems in the new media. There are significant investments in green energy, serving as a beacon of hope, which encourage people to remain committed to collaborative efforts in advancing sustainable practices.
We agreed on the long-term nature of behavioral change within organizations and the role of the Green Alliance in fostering this transformation, concluding with a positive outlook on the potential for future generations to drive necessary changes in sustainability.
This week is busy for me as I am finalizing several essential activities related to my favorite hobby, product lifecycle management or is it PLM😉?
And most of these activities will result in lengthy blog posts, starting with:
“The week(end) after <<fill in the event>>”.
Here are the upcoming actions:
Click on each image if you want to see the details:
In this Future of PLM Podcast series, moderated by Michael Finocciaro, we will continue the debate on how to position PLM (as a system or a strategy) and move away from an engineering framing. Personally, I never saw PLM as a system and started talking more and more about product lifecycle management (the strategy) versus PLM/PDM (the systems).
Note: the intention is to be interactive with the audience, so feel free to post questions/remarks in the comments, either upfront or during the event.
You might have seen in the past two weeks some posts and discussions I had with the Share PLM team about a unique offering we are preparing: the PLM Awareness program. From our field experience, PLM is too often treated as a technical issue, handled by a (too) small team.
We believe every PLM program should start by fostering awareness of what people can expect nowadays, given the technology, experiences, and possibilities available. If you want to work with motivated people, you have to involve them and give them all the proper understanding to start with.
Join us for the online event to understand the value and ask your questions. We are looking forward to your participation.
This is another event related to the future of PLM; however, this time it is an in-person workshop, where, inspired by four PLM thought leaders, we will discuss and work on a common understanding of what is required for a modern PLM framework. The workshop, sponsored by the Arrowhead fPVN project, will be held in Paris on November 4th, preceding the PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe conference.
We will not discuss the term PLM; we will discuss business drivers, supporting technologies and more. My role as a moderator of this event is to assist with the workshop, and I will share its findings with a broader audience that wasn’t able to attend.
Be ready to learn more in the near future!
Suppose you have followed my blog posts for the past 10 years. In that case, you know this conference is always a place to get inspired, whether by leading companies across industries or by innovative and engaging new developments. This conference has always inspired and helped me gain a better understanding of digital transformation in the PLM domain and how larger enterprises are addressing their challenges.
This time, I will conclude the conference with a lecture focusing on the challenging side of digital transformation and AI: we humans cannot transform ourselves, so we need help.
At the end of this year, we will “celebrate” our fifth anniversary of the PLM Green Global Alliance. When we started the PGGA in 2020, there was an initial focus on the impact of carbon emissions on the climate, and in the years that followed, climate disasters around the world caused serious damage to countries and people.
How could we, as a PLM community, support each other in developing and sharing best practices for innovative, lower-carbon products and processes?
In parallel, driven by regulations, there was also a need to improve current PLM practices to efficiently support ESG reporting, lifecycle analysis, and, soon, the Digital Product Passport. Regulations that push for a modern data-driven infrastructure, and we discussed this with the major PLM vendors and related software or solution partners. See our YouTube channel @PLM_Green_Global_Alliance
In this online Zoom event, we invite you to join us to discuss the topics mentioned in the announcement. Join us in this event and help us celebrate!
I am closing that week at the PTC/User Benelux event in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, with a keynote speech about digital transformation in the PLM domain. Eindhoven is the city where I grew up, completed my amateur soccer career, ran my first and only marathon, and started my career in PLM with SmarTeam. The city and location feel like home. I am looking forward to discussing and meeting with the PTC user community to learn how they experience product lifecycle management, or is it PLM😉?
With all these upcoming events, I did not have the time to focus on a new blog post; however, luckily, in the 10x PLM discussion started by Oleg Shilovitsky there was an interesting comment from Rob Ferrone related to that triggered my mind. Quote:
The big breakthrough will come from 1. advances in human-machine interface and 2. less % of work executed by human in the loop. Copy/paste, typing, voice recognition are all significant limits right now. It’s like trying to empty a bucket of water through a drinking straw. When tech becomes more intelligent and proactive then we will see at least 10x.
This remark reminded me of one of my first blog posts in 2008, when I was trying to predict what PLM would look like in 2050. I thought it is a nice moment to read it (again). Enjoy!
PLM in 2050
As the year ends, I decided to take my crystal ball to see what would happen with PLM in the future. It felt like a virtual experience, and this is what I saw:
- Data is no longer replicated – every piece of information will have a Universal Unique ID, also known as a UUID. In 2020, this initiative became mature, thanks to the merger of some big PLM and ERP vendors, who brought this initiative to reality. This initiative dramatically reduced exchange costs in supply chains and led to bankruptcy for many companies that provided translation and exchange software.
- Companies store their data in ‘the cloud’ based on the concept outlined above. Only some old-fashioned companies still handle their own data storage and exchange, as they fear someone will access their data. Analysts compare this behavior with the situation in the year 1950, when people kept their money under a mattress, not trusting banks (and they were not always wrong)
- After 3D, a complete virtual world based on holography became the next step in product development and understanding. Thanks to the revolutionary quantum-3D technology, this concept could even be applied to life sciences. Before ordering a product, customers could first experience and describe their needs in a virtual environment.
- Finally, the cumbersome keyboard and mouse were replaced by voice and eye recognition. Initially, voice recognition
and eye tracking were cumbersome. Information was captured by talking to the system and by recording eye movements during hologram analysis. This made the life of engineers so much easier, as while researching and talking, their knowledge was stored and tagged for reuse. No need for designers to send old-fashioned emails or type their design decisions for future reuse - Due to the hologram technology, the world became greener. People did not need to travel around the world, and the standard became virtual meetings with global teams(airlines discontinued business class). Even holidays can be experienced in the virtual world thanks to a Dutch initiative inspired by coffee. The whole IT infrastructure was powered by efficient solar energy, drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide.
- Then, with a shock, I noticed PLM no longer existed. Companies were focusing on their core business processes. Systems/terms like PLM, ERP, and CRM no longer existed. Some older people still remembered the battle between those systems over data ownership and the political discomfort this caused within companies.
- As people were working so efficiently, there was no need to work all week. There were community time slots when everyone was active, but 50 per cent of the time, people had time to recreate (to re-create or recreate was the question). Some older French and German designers remembered the days when they had only 10 weeks holiday per year, unimaginable nowadays.
As we still have more than 40 years to reach this future, I wish you all a successful and excellent 2009.
I am looking forward to being part of the green future next year.
Within the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA), we had an internal kick-off meeting related to the topic of Design for Sustainability. As you might have seen on our website, Erik Rieger, PLM Evangelist and now working for PTC, took the initiative to start this focus group.
You might know Erik from a previous interview from the PGGA where we discussed TTPSC’s ecoPLM offering based on Windchill: PLM and Sustainability: talking about ecoPLM.
When Erik announced the Design for Sustainability initiative, it was Matthew Sullivan from CIMPA PLM Service who immediately contacted Erik to work together on this initiative.
And again, you might know CIMPA PLM services from our recent interview with them related to regulations and best practices related to sustainability in the aerospace industry (CSRD, LCA, DPP, AI and more): PLM and Sustainability: talking with CIMPA.
Erik and Matthew decided to participate in an introductory interview, during which they shared their background, passion, and goals related to Design for Sustainability.
Watch the episode here:
Why Design for Sustainability?
Design for Sustainability (DfS) is an approach to designing products, services, systems, and experiences that prioritize environmental, social, and economic sustainability throughout their entire lifecycle. It means creating things in a way that reduces negative impacts on the planet and people while still being functional, profitable, and desirable.
In theory, this should be one of the key areas in which our PGGA members can have a common discussion.
As Erik mentions, it is estimated that 80 % of the environmental impact is defined during the design phase. This is a number that has been coming back in several of our PGGA discussions with all the other software vendors.
More on Design for Sustainability
Just after the recording, Dave Duncan, head of Sustainability at PTC, published the eBook Product Sustainability for Dummies. An excellent book that brings all aspects of sustainability and products together in an easy-to-digest manner. There is also a chapter on Design for Sustainability in the eBook.
Note: Dave Duncan is a recognized PGGA leader in PLM and Sustainability, as we reported last year.
Read the post here: Leaders in PLM and Sustainability – December 2024
A call for action
We hope you watched and enjoyed the interview with Erik and Matthew as an inspiration to become active in this Design for Sustainability discussion group.
The intention is, as mentioned, to share experiences and discuss challenges within the group. It will be a private group where people can discuss openly to avoid any business conflicts. The plan is to start with an initial kick-off Zoom meeting in June the date still to be fixed.
If you are interested in joining this exciting discussion group, please contact Erik Rieger, who will be the focal point for this group. We are looking forward to your contribution, and now is the time to prepare and act.
Join us in the discussion
In my business ecosystem, I have seen a lot of discussions about technical and architectural topics since last year that are closely connected to the topic of artificial intelligence. We are discussing architectures and solutions that will make our business extremely effective. The discussion is mostly software vendor-driven as vendors usually do not have to deal with the legacy, and they can imagine focusing on the ultimate result.
Legacy (people, skills, processes and data) is the mean inhibitor for fast forward in such situations, as I wrote in my previous post: Data, Processes and AI.
However, there are also less visible discussions about business efficiency – methodology and business models – and future sustainability.
These discussions are more challenging to follow as you need a broader and long-term vision, as implementing solutions/changes takes much longer than buying tools.
This time, I want to revisit the discussion on modularity and the need for business efficiency and sustainability.
Modularity – what is it?
Modularity is a design principle that breaks a system into smaller, independent, and interchangeable components, or modules, that function together as a whole. Each module performs a specific task and can be developed, tested, and maintained separately, improving flexibility and scalability.
Modularity is a best practice in software development. Although modular thinking takes a higher initial effort, the advantages are enormous for reuse, flexibility, optimization, or adding new functionality. And as software code has no material cost or scrap, modular software solutions excel in delivery and maintenance.
In the hardware world, this is different. Often, companies have a history of delivering a specific (hardware) solution, and the product has been improved by adding features and options where the top products remain the company’s flagships.
Modularity enables easy upgrades and replacements in hardware and engineering, reducing costs and complexity. As I work mainly with manufacturing companies in my network, I will focus on modularity in the hardware world.
Modularity – the business goal
How often have you heard that a business aims to transition from Engineering to Order (ETO) to Configure/Build to Order (BTO) or Assemble to Order (ATO)? Companies often believe that the starting point of implementing a PLM system is enough, as it will help identify commonalities in product variations, therefore leading to more modular products.
The primary targeted business benefits often include reduced R&D time and cost but also reduced risk due to component reuse and reuse of experience. However, the ultimate goal for CTO/ATO companies is to minimize R&D involvement in their sales and delivery process.
More options can be offered to potential customers without spending more time on engineering.
Four years ago, I discussed modularity with Björn Eriksson and Daniel Strandhammar, who wrote “The Modular Way” during the COVID-19 pandemic. I liked the book because it is excellent for understanding the broader scope of modularity along with marketing, sales, and long-term strategy. Each business type has its modularity benefits.
I had a follow-up discussion with panelists active in modularization and later with Daniel Strandhammar about the book’s content in this blog post: PLM and Modularity.
Next, I got involved with the North European Modularity Network (NEM) group, a group of Scandinavian companies that share modularization experiences and build common knowledge.
Historically, modularization has been a popular topic in North Europe, and meanwhile, the group is expanding beyond Scandinavia. Participants in the group focus on education-sharing strategies rather than tools.
The 2023 biannual meeting I attended hosted by Vestas in Ringkobing was an eye-opener for me.
We should work more integrated, not only on the topic of Modularity and PLM but also on a third important topic: Sustainability in the context of the Circular Economy.
You can review my impression of the event and presentation in my post: “The week after North European Modularity (NEM)“
That post concludes that Modularity, like PLM, is a strategy rather than an R&D mission. Integrating modularity topics into PLM conferences or Circular Economy events would facilitate mutual learning and collaboration.
Modularity and Sustainability
The PLM Green Global Alliance started in 2020 initially had few members. However, after significant natural disasters and the announcement of regulations related to the European Green Deal, sustainability became a management priority. Greenwashing was no longer sufficient.
One key topic discussed in the PLM Green Global Alliance is the circular economy moderated by CIMPA PLM services. The circular economy is crucial as our current consumption of Earth’s resources is unsustainable.
The well-known butterfly diagram from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation below, illustrates the higher complexity of a circular economy, both for the renewables (left) and the hardware (right)
In a circular economy, modularity is essential. The SHARE loop focuses on a Product Service Model, where companies provide services based on products used by different users. This approach requires a new business model, customer experience, and durable hardware. After Black Friday last year, I wrote about this transition: The Product Service System and a Circular Economy.
Modularity is vital in the MAINTAIN/PROLONG loop. Modular products can be upgraded without replacing the entire product, and modules are easier to repair. An example is Fairphone from the Netherlands, where users can repair and upgrade their smartphones, contributing to sustainability.
In the REUSE/REMANUFACTURE loop, modularity allows for reusing hardware parts when electronics or software components are upgraded. This approach reduces waste and supports sustainability.
The REFURBISH/REMANUFACTURE loop also benefits from modularity, though to a lesser extent. This loop helps preserve scarce materials, such as batteries, reducing the need for resource extraction from places like the moon, Mars, or Greenland.
A call for action
If you reached this point of the article, my question is now to reflect on your business or company. Modularity is, for many companies, a dream (or vision) and will become, for most companies, a must to provide a sustainable business.
Modularity does not depend on PLM technology, as famous companies like Scania, Electrolux and Vestas have shown (in my reference network).
Where is your company and its business offerings?
IMPORTANT:
If you aim to implement modularity to support the concepts of the Circular Economy, make sure you do it in a data-driven, model-based environment – here, technology counts.
Conclusion
Don’t miss the focus on the potential relevance of modularity for your company. Modularity improves business and sustainability, AND it touches all enterprise stakeholders. Technology alone will not save the business. Your thoughts?
Do you want to learn more about implementing PLM at an ETO space company?
Listen to our latest podcast: OHB’s Digital Evolution: Transforming Aerospace PLM with Lucía Núñez Núñez
Most times in this PLM and Sustainability series, Klaus Brettschneider and Jos Voskuil from the PLM Green Global Alliance core team speak with PLM related vendors or service partners.
This year we have been speaking with Transition Technologies PSC, Configit, aPriori, Makersite and the PLM Vendors PTC, Siemens and SAP.
Where the first group of companies provided complementary software offerings to support sustainability – “the fourth dimension”– the PLM vendors focused more on the solutions within their portfolio.
This time we spoke with , CIMPA PLM services, a company supporting their customers with PLM and Sustainability challenges, offering an end-to-end support.
What makes them special is that they are also core partner of the PLM Global Green Alliance, where they moderate the Circular Economy theme – read their introduction here: PLM and Circular Economy.
CIMPA PLM services
We spoke with Pierre DAVID and Mahdi BESBES from CIMPA PLM services. Pierre is an environmental engineer and Mahdi is a consulting manager focusing on parts/components traceability in the context of sustainability and a circular economy. Many of the activities described by Pierre and Mahdi were related to the aerospace industry.
We had an enjoyable and in-depth discussion of sustainability, as the aerospace industry is well-advanced in traceability during the upstream design processes. Good digital traceability is an excellent foundation to extend for sustainability purposes.
CSRD, LCA, DPP, AI and more
A bunch of abbreviations you will have to learn. We went through the need for a data-driven PLM infrastructure to support sustainability initiatives, like Life Cycle Assessments and more. We zoomed in on the current Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive(CSRD) highlighting the challenges with the CSRD guidelines and how to connect the strategy (why we do the CSRD) to its execution (providing reports and KPIs that make sense to individuals).
In addition, we discussed the importance of using the proper methodology and databases for lifecycle assessments. Looking forward, we discussed the potential of AI and the value of the Digital Product Passport for products in service.
Enjoy the 37 minutes discussion and you are always welcome to comment or start a discussion with us.
What we learned
- Sustainability initiatives are quite mature in the aerospace industry and thanks to its nature of traceability, this industry is leading in methodology and best practices.
- The various challenges with the CSRD directive – standardization, strategy and execution.
- The importance of the right databases when performing lifecycle analysis.
- CIMPA is working on how AI can be used for assessing environmental impacts and the value of the Digital Product Passport for products in service to extend its traceability
Want to learn more?
Here are some links related to the topics discussed in our meeting:
- CIMPA’s theme page on the PLM Green website: PLM and Circular Economy
- CIMPA’s commitments towards A sustainable, human and guiding approach
- Sopra Steria, CIMPA’s parent company: INSIDE #8 magazine
Conclusion
The discussion was insightful, given the advanced environment in which CIMPA consultants operate compared to other manufacturing industries. Our dialogue offered valuable lessons in the aerospace industry, that others can draw on to advance and better understand their sustainability initiatives
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[…] (The following post from PLM Green Global Alliance cofounder Jos Voskuil first appeared in his European PLM-focused blog HERE.) […]