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.
The PLM Green Global Alliance held a meeting earlier this summer to kick off the establishment of the new Design for Sustainability (DfS) workgroup. Organized by PLM Green cofounder Jos Voskuil and then led by theme moderators Erik Rieger and Matthew Sullivan, the attendees explored each of their various special interests as the DfS topic incorporates many dimensions that vary by both industry and global region.
PTC has announced its latest step in the journey toward enabling smarter, more sustainable product development: the integration between PTC’s enterprise PLM product, Windchill, and Makersite, the leading AI-powered platform for product lifecycle intelligence.
Dave Duncan, VP of Sustainability at PTC, comments: “This integration helps manufacturers who are looking to balance product performance, environmental impact, and compliance demands. By bringing together fragmented supplier data and allowing teams to analyze product footprints for parts and bill of materials (BOMs) directly within Windchill, this integration empowers product development teams to make informed decisions faster and more efficiently than ever before.”
Learn why this is important and what makes it now possible by reading the full announcement HERE.
(The following post from PLM Green Global Alliance cofounder Jos Voskuil first appeared in his European PLM-focused blog HERE.)
Dave Duncan, Head of Sustainability for PLM solution provider PTC, has announced the publication of his new e-book “Product Sustainability for Dummies.”
In a recent LinkedIn post Dave introduced the book by writing:
“Sustainability in manufacturing is complex, and there’s no single playbook to follow. After working with hundreds of customers and partners over the past two years, one thing was clear: manufacturers can take action today in ways that are both practical and profitable.
So I set out to create a comprehensive guide for manufacturers, and now it’s here! Inside, I break down key focus areas, including:
The biggest takeaway? Sustainability isn’t just about reducing footprints—it’s about driving better product outcomes, reducing risk, and staying competitive in a changing market.
Whether you’re just getting started or refining your strategy, Product Sustainability For Dummies can help you take the next step. Give it a read, would love to hear your thoughts on it!”
Upon reading the book, PLM Green cofounder Jos Voskuil commented:
“I just had the chance to read this eBook, and I absolutely loved it! Dave Duncan masterfully brings together all aspects of sustainability — highlighting the key principles and connections without overwhelming readers with excessive details.
He breaks down the essentials — the need, regulations, digital thread, and business impact — in a clear and accessible way, making sustainability feel both achievable and essential.
And while Dave Duncan is Head of Sustainability PTC, this book remains completely vendor-neutral. It’s a compelling call to action for leveraging modern PLM infrastructure to seamlessly embed sustainability into your processes.
A must-read for anyone in community – even if you are not a dummy!”
Congratulations, Dave, and thanks for reminding all professionals, at any stage of their career, of the value in learning with the attitude of a “Beginner’s Mind.”
The book can be downloaded for free at https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/corporate/ebook/product-sustainability-for-dummies-beyond-the-book.
(Image Credit PTC)
The PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) announces that a new study theme focused on Design for Sustainability (DfS) has been established which will be led by PLM Green contributing moderator Erik Rieger from Transition Technologies PSC Germany.
PLM Green’s mission is to educate, advocate, and collaborate across the boundaries of technical disciplines, industries, and international borders to promote the use of Product Lifecycle Management strategies, technologies, and software tools in the transition to a sustainable decarbonized circular economy. There are many applications of PLM that can contribute to this transition as referenced in PLM Green Examples.
Due to the wide variety of these PLM use cases, the PGGA previously created five core study themes hat examine the application of PLM within: Sustainability, Green Energy, Circular Economy, Climate Change, and Life Cycle Assessment. Each special interest activity is led by expert moderators who presently include Jos Voskuil from TacitIT, Klaus Brettschneider from LinxAS, Mark Reisig from CIMdata, Patrice Quencez from CIMPA PLM Services, and Richard McFall from PLM Alliances. The PGGA also acknowledges prior contributions from Ilan Madjar of XLM Solutions, Hannes Lindfred from TrusTrace, Bjorn Fidjeland from PLM Partners, and Lionel Grealou from XlifeCycle.
In the last century our corporate business cultures and design engineering functions have been focused upon the well-known three dimensions of time, cost, and quality. As a consequence people, processes, and technologies were organized and optimized around these KPIs which became unrelenting drivers of new product development.
Now with the criticality of establishing a more sustainable global economy, it is imperative that design decisions include the fourth dimension of sustainability; what is called Design for Sustainability (DfS). The move to adding then prioritizing sustainability considerations promises to transform not just products, processes, and technologies, but also professions, organizations, and entire industries.
In contrast to other sustainability-related disciplines, DfS has an added burden of complexity: the design phase planning of a product must now include a prediction of its sustainability impact. This impact assessment may come from rigorous analysis using hard data or only estimates often relying upon extrapolations and comparisons.
These DfS decisions will ultimately determine the true sustainability of a product over a lifecycle that can run decades, including its repair, reuse, refurbishment, and recycling. Product data and usage information that is not complete in the early design stages must then be predicted, which becomes the “Dilemma of DfS”. The 80/20 Pareto Principle certainly applies where 80% of sustainability impact is defined during the first 20% of product life when much important data is still unknown.
Since we as an engineering community are still at the beginning of the transformation toward DfS thinking, our speed of implementation and standardization greatly matters. The goal of this new PLM Green theme and study group is to elevate and accelerate that transformation by sharing educational learnings, best practices, and real-world experiences across the three levels of:
To accomplish this our group’s mission is to establish an open non-commercial forum of design engineering professionals from around the world who freely share their knowledge, experiences, and best practices that will boost the DfS transformation.
Our near-term focus will be on exploring how best to take advantage of “PLM Levers” for supporting design for sustainability, and defining what new advancements in PLM-enabling capabilities, implementations, and user applications will be needed.
To be successful, DfS will require the following challenges be addressed, most which are ideal for PLM business strategies and software solutions:
We propose in our DfS theme working group to exchange experiences, thought leadership, and most importantly, professional encouragement to amplify our voices and accelerate our actions. As in the other PLM Green themes, we will do so by educating, advocating, and collaborating across the boundaries of technical disciplines, different industries, and international borders.
We will pursue these objectives using a plan composed of several elements that may include: commentaries, use cases, virtual round-table discussion groups, blog posts, book and paper reviews, recorded interviews, industry surveys, and participation as guest speakers in conferences and webinars hosted by others.
No one association, business group, or NGO, regardless of how large or small, can produce all the advancements in sustainability that are urgently needed. Thus communicating, cooperating, and collaborating with other professional groups, organizations, and alliances will be needed which we enthusiastically look forward to pursuing.
To participate in our PLM Green theme study group on DfS, we invite you to first, if you have not yet done so, join the PLM Green LinkedIn Group then contact our moderator Dr.-Ing Erik Rieger at erieger@ptc.com to share your area of special interest and expertise.
Check back soon to this website page as we announce activities for 2025, or register HERE to receive our news, updates, and announcements of events.
Here below we have started maintaining a curated list of featured white papers, blog posts, presentations, case studies, webinars, and interviews on Design for Sustainability. For inclusion in this library we invite you to send us examples you have come across in your own work, company, industry, or country to info@plmgreenalliance.com.
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.
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.
The latest PLM Green Global Alliance post is authored by Klaus Brettschneider, principal moderator for our Life Cycle Assessment study theme and Director of Sustainability Products for PLM consultancy Linx-AS.
Engineers and designers in New Product Development (NPD) and Research & Development (R&D) play a critical role in shaping the sustainability of products, processes, and systems. A McKinsey study documented that while product R&D in the manufacturing industry only accounts for 5% of a product’s cost, the decisions made then influence up to 80% of the resources ultimately consumed, thus defining the product’s environmental footprint.
As a result, NPD and R&D departments are increasingly expected to incorporate aspects of sustainability into their product designs and usage. A holistic understanding of the product’s environmental impact throughout its entire life cycle, from the material sourcing to manufacturing, distribution, usage, repair, and end-of-life disposition becomes necessary.
This month we are pleased to feature a guest blog submitted by PLM Green Global Alliance follower Roger L. Franz. who shares a few things he has learned as a Principal in Engineering Information Technology when beginning to explore the state of PLM tools to Design for Sustainability.
Design for Sustainability is now a mainstream requirement from governments, regulators, and customers. In this brief we summarize some current trends in the area of PLM tools to support rapid engineering assessment of environmental footprint among the many engineering choices. Engineering and science-based tools to quickly guide hardware engineers toward material selection and product configuration choices with reduced environmental footprint are critical to our future.
