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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.

Recently, we initiated the Design for Sustainability workgroup, an initiative from two of our PGGA members, Erik Rieger and Matthew Sullivan. You can find a recording of the kick-off here on our YouTube channel.
Thanks to the launch of the Design for Sustainability workgroup, we were introduced to Dr. Elvira Rakova, founder and CEO of the startup company Direktin.
Her mission is to build the Digital Ecosystem of engineering tools and simulation for Compressed Air Systems. As typical PLM professionals with a focus on product design, we were curious to learn about developments in the manufacturing space. And it was an interesting discussion, almost a lecture.
Compressed air and Direktin
Dr. Elvira Rakova has been working with compressed air in manufacturing plants for several years, during which she has observed the inefficiency of how compressed air is utilized in these facilities. It is an available resource for all kinds of machines in the plant, often overdimensioned and a significant source of wasted energy.
To address this waste of energy, linked to CO2 emissions, she started her company to help companies scale, dimension, and analyse their compressed air usage. A mix of software and consultancy to make manufacturing processes using compressed air responsible for less carbon emissions, and for the plant owners, saving significant money related to energy usage.
For us, it was an educational discussion, and we recommend that you watch or listen to the next 36 minutes
What I learned
- The use of compressed air and its energy/environmental impact were like dark matter to me.
I never noticed it when visiting customers as a significant source to become more sustainable. - Although the topic of compressed air seems easy to understand, its usage and impact are all tough to address quickly and easily, due to legacy in plants, lack of visibility on compressed air (energy usage) and needs and standardization among the providers of machinery.
- The need for data analysis is crucial in addressing the reporting challenges of Scope 3 emissions, and it is also increasingly important as part of the Digital Product Passport data to be provided. Companies must invest in the digitalization of their plants to better analyze and improve energy usage, such as in the case of compressed air.
- In the end, we concluded that for sustainability, it is all about digital partnerships connecting the design world and the manufacturing world and for that reason, Elvira is personally motivated to join and support the Design for Sustainability workgroup
Want to learn more?
- Another educational webinar: Design Review Culture and Sustainability
- Explore the Direktin website to learn more
Conclusions
The PLM Green Global Alliance is not only about designing products; we have also seen lifecycle assessments for manufacturing, as discussed with Makersite and aPriori. These companies focused more on traditional operations in a manufacturing plant. Through our lecture/discussion on the use of compressed air in manufacturing plants, we identified a new domain that requires attention.
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.
In recent months, I’ve noticed a decline in momentum around sustainability discussions, both in my professional network and personal life. With current global crises—like the Middle East conflict and the erosion of democratic institutions—dominating our attention, long-term topics like sustainability seem to have taken a back seat.
But don’t stop reading yet—there is good news, though we’ll start with the bad.
The Convenient Truth
Human behavior is primarily emotional. A lesson valuable in the PLM domain and discussed during the Share PLM summit. As SharePLM notes in their change management approach, we rely on our “gator brain”—our limbic system – call it System 1 and System 2 or Thinking Fast and Slow. Faced with uncomfortable truths, we often seek out comforting alternatives.
The film Don’t Look Up humorously captures this tendency. It mirrors real-life responses to climate change: “CO₂ levels were high before, so it’s nothing new.” Yet the data tells a different story. For 800,000 years, CO₂ ranged between 170–300 ppm. Today’s level is ~420 ppm—an unprecedented spike in just 150 years as illustrated below.
Frustratingly, some of this scientific data is no longer prominently published. The narrative has become inconvenient, particularly for the fossil fuel industry.
Persistent Myths
Then there is the pseudo-scientific claim that fossil fuels are infinite because the Earth’s core continually generates them. The Abiogenic Petroleum Origin theory is a fringe theory, sometimes revived from old Soviet science, and lacks credible evidence. See image below
Oil remains a finite, biologically sourced resource. Yet such myths persist, often supported by overly complex jargon designed to impress rather than inform.
The Dissonance of Daily Life
A young couple casually mentioned flying to the Canary Islands for a weekend at a recent birthday party. When someone objected on climate grounds, they simply replied, “But the climate is so nice there!”

“Great climate on the Canary Islands”
This reflects a common divide among young people—some are deeply concerned about the climate, while many prioritize enjoying life now. And that’s understandable. The sustainability transition is hard because it challenges our comfort, habits, and current economic models.
The Cost of Transition
Companies now face regulatory pressure such as CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), DPP (Digital Product Passport), ESG, and more, especially when selling in or to the European market. These shifts aren’t usually driven by passion but by obligation. Transitioning to sustainable business models comes at a cost—learning curves and overheads that don’t align with most corporations’ short-term, profit-driven strategies.
However, we have also seen how long-term visions can be crushed by shareholder demands:
- Xerox (1970s–1980s) pioneered GUI, the mouse, and Ethernet, but failed to commercialize them. Apple and Microsoft reaped the benefits instead.
- General Electric under Jeff Immelt tried to pivot to renewables and tech-driven industries. Shareholders, frustrated by slow returns, dismantled many initiatives.
- Despite ambitious sustainability goals, Siemens faced similar investor pressure, leading to spin-offs like Siemens Energy and Gamesa.
The lesson?
Transforming a business sustainably requires vision, compelling leadership, and patience—qualities often at odds with quarterly profit expectations. I explored these tensions again in my presentation at the PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe 2024 conference, read more here: Model-Based: The Digital Twin.
I noticed discomfort in smaller, closed-company sessions, some attendees said, “We’re far from that vision. ”
My response: “That’s okay. Sustainability is a generational journey, but it must start now”.
Signs of Hope
Now for the good news. In our recent PGGA (PLM Green Global Alliance) meeting, we asked: “Are we tired?” Surprisingly, the mood was optimistic.
Yes, some companies are downscaling their green initiatives or engaging in superficial greenwashing. But other developments give hope:
- China is now the global leader in clean energy investments, responsible for ~37% of the world’s total. In 2023 alone, it installed over 216 GW of solar PV—more than the rest of the world combined—and leads in wind power too. With over 1,400 GW of renewable capacity, China demonstrates that a centralized strategy can overcome investor hesitation.
- Long-term-focused companies like Iberdrola (Spain), Ørsted (Denmark), Tesla (US), BYD, and CATL (China) continue to invest heavily in EVs and batteries—critical to our shared future.
A Call to Engineers: Design for Sustainability
We may be small at the PLM Green Global Alliance, but we’re committed to educating and supporting the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) community on sustainability.
That’s why I’m excited to announce the launch of our Design for Sustainability initiative on June 25th.
Led by Eric Rieger and Matthew Sullivan, this initiative will bring together engineers to collaborate and explore sustainable design practices. Whether or not you can attend live, we encourage everyone to engage with the recording afterward.
Conclusion
Sustainability might not dominate headlines today. In fact, there’s a rising tide of misinformation, offering people a “convenient truth” that avoids hard choices. But our work remains urgent. Building a livable planet for future generations requires long-term vision and commitment, even when it is difficult or unpopular.
So, are you tired—or ready to shape the future?
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









Although scientists engaged in a discussion about the scientific evidence, there were no significant economic forces behind the scenes influencing the scientific research.


We look forward to having 
The tools for generative design, life cycle assessment, and, of course, digital twins for the various lifecycle phases can help companies to develop and manufacture more sustainable products.

Part of this challenge is the lack of education among top management, who are primarily focused on efficiency gains rather than adopting new approaches or mitigating risk.
However, first and foremost, the most critical factor in driving sustainability within organizations is the people. Where companies are challenged in creating a green image, including the introduction of the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO), there has always been resistance from existing business leaders, who prioritize money and profitability.




And recently, we saw the 









[…] (The following post from PLM Green Global Alliance cofounder Jos Voskuil first appeared in his European PLM-focused blog HERE.) […]
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