(April, 2022) Johan Salenstedt, CEO at configuration lifecycle management solutions Configit, explores the benefits of green configuration in manufacturing in this article and interview published on Manufacturing Digital Magazine.
“Concerns around climate change and environmental protection have given rise to the concept of “green configuration,” wherein a configurator can show the user the environmental consequences of a configuration choice. With this, a company can offer options that best suit the sustainability goals of the customer. It’s more about the transparency with which companies are “guiding” their customers to fully understand the environmental consequences of their specific configuration.”
This timely post from Configit explores the role of Configuration Lifecycle Management solutions in creating a more sustainable future where customers will have the product data necessary to make low-carbon choices. The authors write:
“In a Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution, the software parameters are set as the customer makes selections in the configuration process, ensuring the software configuration matches the customer requirements. Configuration Lifecycle Management is about ensuring all functions in an organization have an aligned view on the product variants that can be sold and manufactured. In a CLM solution, the technical features of a product are linked with the commercial features using rules. Traditionally, this means that sales and marketing will introduce parameters that represent the customer requirements and link them to the technical capabilities of the product….Carbon footprint can be added as an additional commercial feature that needs to be linked to technical information on the carbon footprint impact of each component used in the product.”
Sustainability in manufacturing is a hot topic. Customers, shareholders and regulatory agencies are increasingly demanding manufacturing companies provide sustainable, carbon-neutral options for the products they design, manufacture, sell, and service.
For many of these companies, most of the tools they need to do this are already available in their enterprise tech stack. These solutions include PLM and CLM. But how and where should they begin?
