Real + Digital Drives Production and Supply Chain Sustainability

Production plays a massive role in the carbon footprint of modern society. Even a 1% reduction in the carbon footprint of global production activities would remove 90 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere, equivalent to 9,000 Eiffel Towers.
A sustainable Digital Enterprise approaches this problem by first measuring and monitoring production operations to identify areas in which impactful change can be made quickly. Then in the virtual world, simulations can be used to amend procedures, optimize logistics, and improve production processes to increase the efficiency of a factory in multiple aspects. The combination of digital and real by using simulation and monitoring software can help factories reduce their consumption of electricity and change the mix of electricity generation. Customer feedback has indicated that Siemens’ simulation and monitoring solutions can help achieve up to a 14% reduction in electrical power consumption and up to 40% reduction in the use of natural gas in production.
In another example, Ekonoke, a Siemens customer, is focusing on applying digitalization to support the growing of climate-resistant hops. The indoor farming technique uses integrated automation and simulation to control growing parameters, anticipate crop deficiencies or pests, automate agricultural tasks, and forecast harvests. Through their digitalization approach, Ekonoke can produce hops with a carbon footprint twenty times smaller than traditional methods. Their method also uses 95% less water and is completely free of pesticides.

Digitalization facilitates Circularity
Circularity is another key aspect of sustainability, making further use of materials that would otherwise become waste. For example, spent grains leftover after the brewing of beer remain rich in plant-based protein and vitamins. Instead of becoming waste, these grains can be used to produce food. But first, the grains must be carefully dried in large and energy-intensive spray dryers. The challenge is to dry the grains enough to prevent mold growth without wasting energy by drying for too long.
The Digital Twin can help strike this balance perfectly. A Digital Twin of the spray dryer enables the simulation of air intake, air flows throughout the chamber, and temperature gradients, all measured with virtual sensors in the digital world. Running this Digital Twin on an Industrial Edge device enables live production data to be connected to the Digital Twin, a direct merging of real and digital, almost like giving the user Superman’s X-Ray vision! The live data can drive real-time optimizations of the spray dryer, constantly adjusting the drying process based on the virtual sensors to produce optimal dried grains for incorporation back into the food cycle.
The circle is complete when a company uses the dried grains to produce nutritional food powders that are sustainable, accessible, shelf stable, and easy to transport. This requires specialized machinery and an efficient and flexible production network to deliver the powders around the world, particularly to areas where access to nutritious food is limited.

Blendhub, another Siemens customer, builds such machines and deploys them in localized food production hubs all connected to the cloud to drive transparency and consistency. The localized powder blending hubs use local raw materials to replicate proven recipes anywhere in the world, using simulation technology to adapt formulations to meet regional requirements and available resources. In the production hubs, such flexibility is enabled by highly adaptable production concepts supported by intelligent automation, Digital Twins, and simulation.
Managing Supply Chain Emissions through Digitalization
The Digital Enterprise extends beyond internal processes of product design and manufacturing, bringing the supply chain and other external processes into the digital realm. In fact, 90% of a company’s emissions come from its supply chain from activities involved in material sourcing, transportation, and more. Creating a clear picture of these emissions sources across an entire supply chain is, even for a single product, a complex task.

Data collection and reporting are thus a key piece of sustainability in the digital age. Accurate and detailed data collection is critical not only for regulatory compliance but also drives strategic improvements to sustainability performance across the supply chain. Such data collection and reporting rely on transparency throughout the supply chain to trace a complete product carbon footprint (PCF).
An accurate PCF can only be created through a continuous and seamless data exchange along the entire value chain. This requires digital solutions that can correctly measure carbon and equivalent sources at all stages of the product lifecycle and that provide secure and trustworthy connections for partner organizations. The adoption of digital PCF management solutions enables emissions to be quantified as they occur on-site and aggregated along the entire value chain. The result is a dynamic PCF that helps make data-driven decisions for impactful reduction measures.
Fostering Sustainability with Digitalization
To remain competitive, companies are seeking means of reducing costs while continuing to foster innovation in products and services. At the same time, industry has a crucial role to play in the development of sustainability solutions, making products and production systems increasingly efficient and investing in decarbonization measures.
Through digital transformation, combining the real and digital worlds, companies can become sustainable Digital Enterprises, unlocking the ability to collect and synthesize data from throughout the lifecycle and supply chains. As a result, various engineering domains will collaborate more seamlessly, even between product and production, to develop products optimized for performance and sustainability. Likewise, production and the supply chain can leverage greater data transparency and digital solutions to progressively decarbonize operations while also limiting costs.
These Digital Enterprises will leverage data and digital solutions to master an increasingly complex industrial landscape through intelligence, agility, and resilience to dynamic conditions, all while building sustainable products and systems for the future. To learn more, visit us at www.siemens.com/digital-enterprise