PLM Green Interview with Makersite

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We are happy to start the year with the next round of the PLM Global Green Alliances (PGGA) interview series on PLM and Sustainability. This year, we will speak with some new companies, and we will also revisit some of our previous guests to learn about their progress in developing or applying sustainability solutions as part of a PLM strategy.

While we have now spoken with Aras, Autodesk, CIMdata, Dassault Systèmes, PTC, SAP, Sustaira, and Transition Technologies PSC there are still many software companies rapidly developing product portfolios in sustainability. You can find these recorded discussions HERE.

This time, I and fellow PLM Green contributor Mark Reisig, were happy to meet virtually with Makersite, a company whose AI-powered Product Lifecycle Intelligence (PLI) software can bring together cost, environmental, compliance, and risk data in one place as a data foundation to make smarter, greener decisions with the deepest understanding of your supply chain.

This interview was first published by PLM Green co-founder Jos Voskuil on his Virtual Dutchman European weblog that focuses on how PLM is changing and affects us all.

Makersite

We were fortunate to arrange an insightful discussion with Makersite’s CEO and founder, Neil D’Souza, who has been active in the field of sustainability for almost twenty years, even before it became a cool (or disputed) profession.

It was an encouraging dialogue where we appreciated hearing realistic answers to our questions without all the marketing buzzwords often used in the new domain of sustainability. Watch the just over 30 minutes of our educational conversation now below or later on YouTube HERE.

Slides shown during the interview, combined with additional company information, can be found HERE.

What We Learned

  • Makersite’s mission is to enable designers and manufacturers to make better products faster using economic parameters that can be easily extended with sustainability parameters. The power of Makersite is that it connects data from  enterprise systems (PDM, PLM, ERP, SCM, etc.) and then uses AI/Machine Learning algorithms to support data aggregation, validation, interrogation, and reporting on compliance, sustainability, costs, and risk factors.
  • Compliance and sustainability are the areas where we see a significant need for companies to invest. It is not a revolutionary business change but an extension of scope. We discussed this in the context of the stage-gate process, where sustainability parameters should be added at each gate.
  • Neil has an very interesting podcast, Five Lifes to Fifty, where he discusses the path to sustainable products with co-hosts Shelley Metcalfe and Jim Fava. The podcast name refers to the fact that the average product will experience five innovation lifecycles before 2050. Recently, they discussed sustainability in the context of the stage-gate process.
  • To move forward with sustainability requires caring about the granularity and accuracy of data to fully understand what’s happening, and from there, enable value engineering. This includes deep collaboration suppliers where possible, although IP protection remains a hot topic, which in turns elevates the business case for a digital transformation capable of supporting sustainability.

Want to Learn More?

Here are some links to the topics discussed in our meeting:

Conclusions

With Makersite, we discovered a focused company, led my a CEO passionate about sustainability, that is applying its expertise in cost, compliance, and risk analysis across the enterprise and its supply chains to the domain of sustainability. As Makersite’s technology partners page shows, there are many applications for their PLI technology across numerous industries in the race to create a more sustainable, decarbonized, circular economy.

We will learn about another sustainability solution in our next interview so stay informed by subscribing to our news emails and then joining our PLM Green LinkedIn discussion group exploring the intersection of PLM and Sustainability.