Monthly Archives: October 2024

Leaders in PLM and Sustainability – October 2024

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It’s motivating to witness so many Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) professionals, educators, consultants, and solution providers become active in creating a more sustainable, low-carbon, circular economy. Only a few years ago when one googled the terms “PLM and Sustainability” or “PLM and Sustainable Product Design” there were very few results. Now there are so many resources that vendors are paying for sponsored rankings; one of the reasons the PLM Green LinkedIn Group has become popular as an alternative non-commercial community platform.

This is the second in a new series of posts on “Leaders in PLM and Sustainability” from the PLM Green Global Alliance where we profile professionals from around the world who are working at the intersection of PLM and Sustainability. As referenced in our first profile featuring Mark Reisig at CIMdata, there are many challenging opportunities in R&D and NPD for our profession as time is running out to lower greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade as climate scientists warn us is crucial.

Our next recognized “Leader in PLM and Sustainability” is Jos Voskuil who is one of the original co-founders of the PLM Green Global Alliance, started back in 2020 when we were all locked down due to COVID with more time and freedom to think about big issues.

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Addressing the Global Plastics Problem in Electrotechnical Product Design

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Our latest PLM Green Global Alliance post is a guest author contribution from Roger Franz who is a recognized authority on supply chain reporting for compliance with worldwide regulations, leveraging his decades of experience with engineering software tools and enterprise IT systems.

Previously, Roger shared his professional passion and special expertise for sustainable product design in “PLM Tools to Design for Sustainability.” His new article on plastics pollution is especially timely, given all the recent scientific papers about the widespread presence of plastics in our natural ecosystems, food sources, and no longer surprising, human bodies.

Introduction 

More than just unsightly “plastics pollution,” the volume of consumer plastics and lack of closed-loop recovery has created a significant micro-and nano-plastics problem.  These invisible plastic particles are found around the world including within animal and human tissues.  For several reasons, including a much smaller volume of plastic used in electrotechnical products compared to consumer plastics, and the generally longer life of hardware compared to the rapid turnover of consumer goods and packaging, the microplastics problem is not generally tagged as a major electronics problem – or at least not yet. Now is the time to be proactive.

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