Siemens Can Turn the Tide Towards Sustainable Design

Head of sustainability says few industry players can play a bigger role.

“Few industrial players in the area of product development have the same concrete importance and potential to make a difference in sustainable design as Siemens Digital Industries [Software],” claims Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability for Siemens Digital Industries, in an interview with engineering.com.

This is my third article covering sustainable design tools among the three major PLM developers. I previously covered Dassault Systèmes and PTC.

“I’m optimistic because we're starting to see a real move from thought to real strategic direction, and then to action for a lot of our frontrunners,” says Siemens VP of Sustainability, Eryn Devola. (Image: Siemens.)

“I’m optimistic because we’re starting to see a real move from thought to real strategic direction, and then to action for a lot of our frontrunners,” says Head of Sustainability for Siemens Digital Industries, Eryn Devola. (Image: Siemens.)

There are several reasons for Devola’s claims, but above all she points to the fact that Siemens has both the software and hardware for most types of industrial product development and manufacturing—end-to-end. At the same time, the group is strongly positioned as it’s not only a leading company in PLM software, but also one of the world’s largest players in smart manufacturing automation.

With product development and automation put together, Siemens has thousands of customers globally, a large number of which are some of the world’s largest OEMs in dominant segments such as automotive, high-tech, heavy machinery, aerospace and defense. In addition, Siemens manufactures things within group-owned companies. This means that innovations on the PLM and automation side can—theoretically—quickly spread among users. Add to this the energy side, where Siemens also holds a leading position, and the picture emerges of a player who can master—again, theoretically—the whole industrial value chain.

“Success in sustainability requires open, communicable solutions and technology platforms that are flexible,” says Devola. “It is certainly great to have solutions for environmentally regulated material choices, as well as digital tools for life cycle analysis (LCA). These are some of the basic requirements. But you have to be aware of the whole. The industrial world looks different from place to place. Skills and knowledge levels can differ significantly, and net-zero sustainability goals are not something that will happen overnight.”

In other words, she indicates that sustainable design is broad and contains several different aspects, which boil down to the fact that no PLM supplier, alone, can guarantee digital tools that save the planet.

Optimistic, But Aware of the Big Challenges

No one said it would be easy to face the challenges and change direction to become a more sustainable world. Just think of a project like replacing a PLM/PDM system at a major global OEM enterprise. Even a conservative calculation estimates that it takes up to a decade before things work smoothly.

Today the whole planet must change, and it’s urgent. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “if current warming rates continue, the world would reach human-induced global warming of 1.5 C around 2040.”

“Can we handle this?” I asked Devola.

“Yes, I am optimistic,” she replied, “but certainly there are challenges. In the climate change arena, for me the big thing is that we had the Paris Agreement to limit to 1.5 C and people have made those commitments. But 2030, 2040 and even 2050 are not nearly as far away as maybe they first seemed. That is one side of the matter.”

She adds, “Another equally interesting development trend is that we’re starting to see a real move from thought to real strategic direction, and then to action for a lot of our frontrunners. I live in the U.S. and we’re a little bit slower to move in general, but I also spent a lot of time in Europe, and you can see a lot of that taking hold where companies are trying to harness their footprints, not only because of their Paris commitments. But you see the legislation, especially in the EU, following that direction. The EU taxonomy reporting went live this year. This is promising.”

Environmental Award for NX CAD

In light of this background, what does Siemens bring to the table?

A lot, says Devola. Siemens’ software arsenal includes tools added to its flagship NX CAD in the PLM portfolio Siemens Xcelerator. The NX solution places environmental impact assessment at the heart of the design process. This enables organizations to calculate, view and evaluate the effects of their design decisions, based on a diverse and comprehensive set of more than 30 environmental impact parameters. The metrics and assessments provided by NX help engineers identify areas of improvement to reduce design-influenced KPIs by up to 40 percent.

At the same time, a lot is happening on the LCA side within Siemens. Devola says, “Siemens is looking at deepening capabilities regarding predictive LCAs. For example: What could happen if I select material A versus material B… But we’ve already got some of that prediction for LCA impacts within NX today, and we’re looking at how do we better carry that through to be able to look at that during simulation. This is important because we believe that the predictive pieces are the key to the future, where the reporting piece is important to understand impacts. This needs to be considered earlier in the process, before the material selection, and even before the supplier selection.”

How does it look on the material database side?

“We have the ability with the NX tool to go to a commercially available database. We’re currently integrated with Nexpirit,” says Devola, explaining that it offers a database called the Product Footprint Engine (PFE), which can help evaluate carbon-dioxide‒equivalent (CO2e) values along the manufacturing processes and the entire value chain.

“But you could also pull it into a private database that you might have for your enterprise,” she added. “A number of our big, large enterprise customers maintain their own material databases. Within Siemens, for example, we maintain our own material database. Or you could plug into a different third party if you wanted to, as well.”

Advanced Battery Development Tools

But this is only one of several factors that Devola points out.

“The first is that we have an entire business called smart infrastructure, and a big part of that is the work they do in electrification. They do grid software, grid management [and] micro grids. They really help us [with] our own manufacturers to make sure that we’re [able] to move as many of our facilities [off] fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

Example of the interface in Siemens Battery Studio. (Image: Siemens.)

Example of the interface in Siemens Battery Studio. (Image: Siemens.)

This means a lot of relevant in-house sustainability expertise has evolved. Let’s look at the battery side, for example.

“We started working with actors in this sector early, really using some of our traditional design tools and automation tools,” says Devola. “What we’ve been able to do here is continue to develop our expertise in those areas with advanced battery simulation tools and concepts like closed-loop manufacturing … where environmental aspects certainly play important roles. And really, our digitization portfolio with Teamcenter, with NX and with the Simcenter simulation platform and more really helped pull that together with [automation.] We have the ability to offer end-to-end solutions that move from software to hardware and back.”

This holistic view provides advantages at all levels—not because Siemens alone is sitting on the truth, but because the company’s approach uses openness in combination with deep industrial know-how.

Spreading Capable Software to Smaller Businesses is Key

According to Devola, an important aspect of sustainability is that it is not only created by the large OEM. Smaller actors and startups must also be given the chance to develop solutions that can make a difference. What Siemens offers in this context is a “really scalable, interoperable approach, that allows people to develop great ideas and give them life.”

“We were talking to a chemical tire recycler that takes old tires and makes them into feedstock for the chemical industry,” Devola says. “They had the technology figured out, but their big struggle was how do they get themselves scaled and connected? That was a place where we were able to come in with some of those Siemens Xcelerator-based tools and help them move forward. It made a difference.”

“When we talk of Siemens Xcelerator portfolio,” she adds, “one of the big things is what we’re able to do through offering SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) [is that] we’re able to help smaller companies grow faster. That’s really what we see as a huge role for us in scaling innovation for sustainability.”

“For example, we’ve worked with a number of vertical farming companies who are just starting out. In this context, we have a financial services arm within Siemens which can also help them scale CapEx. It becomes a huge issue for small enterprises, but once they’ve got that we’re able to give them a solution where maybe two or three Teamcenter licenses are needed to start with, or two or three licenses of Simcenter. As they grow, we can give those young companies the same quality of tool as you might give a large enterprise.”

Devola adds that technologies and innovations will be some of the most important elements on the journey ahead. “The engineers and the innovators of the world will be able to make a difference,” she says, pointing to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s statement that 80 percent of the environmental impact of a product is decided in the design phase.

“You have to be making conscious decisions about the materials that you are choosing and the design choices,” Devola says. “That’s when you can minimize the material usage, and that’s when you can really convert to different environmentally friendly biomaterials. Once that’s out in the market, once you have a brownfield, it becomes more and more difficult to make those changes.”

“For example,” she concludes, “in automotive we were talking to an aluminum manufacturer, and they said it’s really easy for them to take scrap and recycle that from the production process. It’s so much harder at the end of life because of the way that we design those panels. So, if we change the design to make them easier to disassemble, then we could take that aluminum and reuse it at a higher value level, rather than taking a whole vehicle and shredding it later.”

Sustainable design is incredibly complex. But by virtue of its end-to-end solutions, Siemens Digital Industries’ PLM software and automation divisions can become leaders in this space. This is partly because of its size and its product arsenal, and partly due to its view for sustainable design. In support of these aims, Siemens joined Green Software Foundation’s steering committee to drive sustainable software development in October 2023.