Exploring AI for sustainability – Episode 1 transcript
In the latest episode of Scaling Sustainability Impact, Eryn Devola, Head Sustainability at Siemens Digital Industries and Pina Schlombs, Sustainability Lead & Industrial AI Thought Leader at Siemens Digital Industries Software, discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming sustainability from business obligation to operational advantage. Listen to the full episode here or read the transcript below.
Victoria Carlos: Eryn and Pina, thank you so much for joining me today and welcome to our Scaling Sustainability Impact Podcast. To get us started, can you each share a little bit about your roles here at Siemens? Eryn, why don’t you get us started?
Eryn Devola: I have the pleasure of being responsible at Siemens Digital Industries for our sustainability from three different aspects. First, I’m responsible for our own footprint, so this is what’s happening within our factories, how we travel with the footprints that we make both in carbon, in biodiversity, in substances, in the operations that we have here at Siemens.
Secondly, I then get to take those impacts and look at what are the cradle to next cradle impacts of the products we produce. So, taking those impacts in our own manufacturing facilities and in our own software development and looking at broader looking upstream to our supply chains, looking downstream to our spaces. This could be the amount of energy a motor takes or could be the processing of a computer application that we that we have out there. So that’s my second focus. And then my third focus and sometimes the most exciting one is how we’re able to help others become more sustainable with the products that we put on to the market. How they can use our software solutions sand automation solutions to become more sustainable in their own realization process. It’s really the way that we move from thinking about a footprint to really making a positive handprint by helping others. I have the great opportunity to do all three of those things from my current role.
Pina Schlombs: Hey, happy to be on the podcast today. I’m Pina Schlombs: and I have the pleasure of being responsible for sustainability in the Digital Industries Software division. Working not only with our own entities but also external customers to leverage our digital technologies and engaging them on how we can become more sustainable in our own products and on the manufacturing side in our supply chain. So basically, leveraging all the software capabilities that we have. Towards optimizing making transparent square environmental footprints come from and in the end reaching our net zero ambitions.
Victoria Carlos: Excellent. A bit of a long-winded question to get us started, but Siemens has been talking about the potential of AI for industries for a few years now. But we’re really seeing the benefits of AI start to appear to solve some of today’s biggest sustainability challenges. Eryn, how do you see the importance of sustainability for industrial businesses and Pina, in what areas do you see AI making the biggest impact for sustainability in a manufacturing environment? Maybe Eryn, you can get us started here.
Eryn Devola: Yeah, 1/3 of all emissions that we have come from industry. Industry has a very huge lever, and in fact just saving 1% of the energy used by industry, we’re really talking about 90 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, which means it has a very big impact on sustainability. But what we also know is that the more sustainable a company becomes, the more long-term resilient and then profitable they remain. I mean, it really sounds like a video game. We have a way to cheat time. It’s like we have a cheat code for the video game here and just being able to do more so much faster.
Pina Schlombs: Absolutely. And I think another aspect that maybe we can add is also from our own experience, is that we can democratize a lot of the expertise that we need, and we need it in a broad scale. We need it basically in every team, right? The sustainability expertise to make those decisions, not only for the classical performance, time, cost, quality parameters, but also for sustainability. And we can bring that expertise to the people, to the teams that we have today, be that in engineering, be that in purchasing, be that in supply chain, be that in manufacturing, by incorporating. These capabilities into the systems and using AI to allow them to make these complex decisions, training it with the parameters that they’re used to working with.
Stay tuned for part 2.
Siemens Digital Industries Software helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Siemens’ software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn today’s ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries. Siemens Digital Industries Software – Accelerating transformation.
