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.
Just before the summer holidays the PLM Green Global Alliance was pleased to resume our interview series on PLM and Sustainability where we talk with PLM-related software vendors to discuss their sustainability missions and offerings.
Following recent discussions in the PLM ecosystem, including PSC Transition Technologies (EcoPLM), CIMPA PLM services (LCA), and the Design for Sustainability working group (with multiple vendors & service partners), we now have the opportunity to catch up with Sustaira after almost three years.
In a recent episode of the podcast Stay Sharp in Digital Engineering from Razorleaf, hosts Juliann Grant and Jonathan Scott are joined by renowned PLM thought leader and sustainability advocate, Jos Voskuil, co-founder of the PLM Green Global Alliance.
Topics Covered:
Learn more about why sustainability is becoming a central factor in product innovation and compliance by listening to the podcast now HERE.
The above announcement and images were provided courtesy and copyright of Razorleaf, a global, vendor-agnostic consulting and systems integration firm specializing in digital transformation for forward-thinking manufacturers worldwide.
PLM Green contributor Mark Reisig from CIMdata has authored a new commentary on “Embedding Product Sustainability within PLM.”
In the paper Mark features the work of CONTACT Software to aggregate and manage product data across the lifecycle to provide a complete Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) solution. Key takeaways include:
Learn more by reading on at https://www.cimdata.com/en/resources/complimentary-reports-research/commentaries/item/27677-embedding-product-sustainability-within-plm-commentary.
(Image and some text copyright and courtesy of CIMdata.)
(The following post from PLM Green Global Alliance cofounder Jos Voskuil first appeared in his European PLM-focused blog HERE.)
PLM Green Global Alliance contributor Mark Reisig recently led a CIMdata webinar on “Sustainability Trends Within PLM” on April 10, 2025.
Key topics of the agenda that Mark covered include:
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 E.U.-based PLM Group has published a new e-book on “How to Become a Leader in Sustainability.”
The publication is available for download from the PLM Group HERE.
According to the PLM Group’s website, their mission is to empower people and manufacturing companies to innovate. They do that by digitally transforming your entire value chain, integrating every stage of the product lifecycle from design to aftermarket. Additional information on the PLM Group can be found HERE.
This new post from the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) is next in a series on “Leaders in PLM & Sustainability” where we interview professionals from around the world who are working at the intersection of Product Lifecycle Management and Sustainability.
Our goal for these profiles is to recognize and encourage professionals who are contributing to the greening of PLM across their own work, industry, customers, and suppliers. This is fundamental to PGGA’s mission of creating a global network between professionals who use, develop, research, market, consult, teach, or support PLM business strategies, enabling technologies, and software solutions that have value in transitioning to a more sustainable global economy. As demonstrated by our non-commercial website, we execute this mission by educating, collaborating, and advocating for the role of PLM in creating a circular economy of low-carbon products and processes.
As referenced in our first profile featuring Mark Reisig, our second one recognizing Jos Voskuil, and third featuring Dave Duncan, there are numerous technical, economic, and geopolitical challenges in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade as climate scientists warn us is so critical. Yet, with each of these hurdles there are many rewarding “hands-on” career opportunities to participate in what may be the most important application of PLM we will ever experience.
In his opening Mark summarizes key takeaways of the paper:
“Effectively addressing sustainability factors throughout the product lifecycle is becoming a critical business imperative. Customers increasingly expect products—and the processes behind their development, delivery, and operation—to align with ever more stringent sustainability standards.
Companies that embed sustainability evaluations early in their development process and across their supply chain will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace, improve their efficiency and resiliency, and meet sustainability goals, which leads to long-term profitability
Manufacturers across all industries need to adopt an integrated approach to calculating both cost and carbon footprint earlier in their design and development processes.”
Other topics covered in the commentary include:
The full commentary along with useful references may be downloaded HERE.
The following post first appeared in PLM Green cofounder Jos Voskuil’s European weblog “PLM and Sustainability: talking with CIMPA” on 6 January 2025.
Most times in this PLM and Sustainability series, Klaus Brettschneider and Jos Voskuil from the PLM Green Global Alliance core team speak with PLM related vendors or service partners.
PLM Green contributor Klaus Brettschneider, who is Director of Sustainability Products at Linx-AS LLC, has authored a new thought-leadership whitepaper on “The Sustainability Thread: Rethinking the digital thread to drive sustainability performance and green R&D.”
In the executive summary, Klaus writes:
“The digital twin and digital thread concepts are now mainstream best practices for product lifecycle management (PLM) practitioners and innovation-minded organizations. The interconnectivity of product data models provides superior agility for manufacturers as the digital thread breaks through to once-siloed stakeholders with real-time, accurate information from R&D to commercialization to the customer and back.
Enter sustainability. With regulatory, consumer, and investor pressures on the rise, many manufacturers are running into stakeholders in new silos in the rush to deliver products to market—all the while, leadership wrestles with scattered data, multiple reporting frameworks, and aspirations of a more proactive green R&D posture.
In this white paper, the author posits the creation of a digital thread for sustainability data, simply stated herein as the sustainability thread. The paper explains how integrating sustainability requirements in an organization’s digital thread strategy can transform both sustainability performance and product development. It also explores through real-world use cases how the digitalization of sustainability-related processes can greatly improve operational efficiency and reporting accuracy.”
Continue exploring these topics covered in the whitepaper by downloading it HERE.
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.
This is the third in a new series of posts from the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) on “Leaders in PLM & Sustainability” where we profile and interview professionals from around the world who are working at the intersection of PLM and Sustainability.
Our goal for these profiles is to both recognize and encourage PLM professionals who are contributing to the greening of Product Lifecycle Management in their own work and industry. This is core to PGGA’s mission of growing a mutually supportive global network between professionals who use, develop, research, market, consult, teach, or support PLM business strategies, technologies and software solutions that have value in transitioning to a more sustainable global economy and environmental ecosystems. We execute this mission by focusing on educating, collaborating, and advocating for the role of PLM in creating a circular economy of low-carbon products and processes.
As referenced in our first profile featuring Mark Reisig, and then our second one recognizing Jos Voskuil, there are numerous technical challenges and career opportunities in leveling then lowering greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade as climate scientists warn us is so critical. It’s an exciting time to participate in what may prove to become the most important application of PLM many of us will experience in our careers.
We are now excited to announce that our next recognized “Leader in PLM & Sustainability” is Dave Duncan, who is Vice President of Sustainability at PTC, a well-known provider of PLM-enabling solutions including Windchill and Arena.
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.
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.
It has been very encouraging over the past few years to witness so many Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) professionals become active in the sustainability transition as it becomes increasingly important to our global economy.
In this our next series of posts from the PLM Green Global Alliance we will feature and interview those PLM professionals from around the world whom we consider leaders in driving our profession to create a more sustainable, low carbon, circular economy. There is much innovation in R&D and NPD to be led by these professionals as time is running out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade, which climate scientists warn us is critical.
Our first recognized “Leader in PLM and Sustainability” is Mark Reisig who is an Executive Consultant and the Sustainability & Green Energy Practice Director at the global PLM market consultancy CIMdata. Mark also volunteers his time and expertise to PLM Green as a moderator of the Sustainability and Green Energy topical research themes.
Recently, I (Mark Reisig) delivered a CIMdata webinar titled, “Sustainability & PLM: An Industrial Perspective.” For those of you who were unable to attend I am excited to share the following summary of key points that I made. You can also view the recorded webinar here at your leisure.
The following history of the PLM Green Global Alliance is from our co-founder Jos Voskuil who shares his passion and mission for the role of PLM in creating a more sustainable, low-carbon, circular economy.
I am happy to see that the number of members of our PLM Green Global Alliance on LinkedIn has been growing fast recently.
Early this year, we reached 1000 members; now, as of this post, we have almost 1200 members in our LinkedIn group—a growth of 20 % in less than half a year!
Each member of the #plmgreen alliance has a unique story and reason for joining.
I’m genuinely interested in learning more about your motivation. To kick off this conversation, I am sharing my journey, and I am eager to hear your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.
The global-leading PLM consultancy CIMdata has announced an educational webinar on “Sustainability and PLM: The Industrial Perspective” to be held on July 11, 2024, at 11 am EDT US.
