The majority of businesses aspire to achieve sustainability but often lack clarity on where to begin. Many perceive adopting sustainable practices as a daunting task, believing it necessitates a complete overhaul of their production processes to make a significant impact. However, let me assure you that this is not the case.
So, where should you start your journey towards creating more sustainable product design and manufacturing processes?
To genuinely embrace sustainability, focus on making design decisions at the outset. Designing for repair, reducing material usage, refurbishment, remanufacturing, recovery, reuse, and recycling is crucial. It requires a holistic approach that considers a product’s environmental impact throughout its lifecycle.
Over 80% of a product’s environmental impact stems from design decisions made early on.
Here are three ways design changes can drive sustainability:
Design for Dematerialization
Dematerialization, or material usage reduction, emerges as a crucial strategy for sustainability, aiming to reduce material consumption and weight without sacrificing strength and durability. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies like Generative Design, engineers can optimize designs to use only the necessary amount of material, tailored to specific loads and constraints of each application.
Creo Simulation Live offers a seamless platform for quickly assessing how different materials or reduced material usage affect design performance, enabling adjustments earlier in the design process.
Moreover, with solutions like Creo AMX, designers leverage additive manufacturing capabilities to build structures in the most efficient direction, generating automated supports, and showcasing the potential of lattice structures.
These innovations not only allow for a material reduction but pave the way for lighter, more sustainable products that maintain the required level of performance. As we continue to prioritize dematerialization in manufacturing, we edge closer to a future where sustainability and efficiency are seamlessly integrated into every aspect of product development.
Design for Waste Reduction
Designing for manufacturability and minimizing material waste, such as through minimal stock allowance, ensures efficient use of resources from the outset. By leveraging die casting for near-net shape production throughout the manufacturing process, material waste is significantly reduced to maximize material utilization and minimize scrap generation.
Additionally, utilizing numerically controlled (NC) strategies optimized for fast machining and lower energy consumption, such as high-speed machining (HSM) roughing and finishing, contributes to waste reduction and energy efficiency.
Moreover, designing for ease of service and assembly extends product lifespan and reduces the demand for new products. While some parts of a product may wear faster than others, creating products for easy disassembly eliminates waste because you do not have to throw away the entire product to extend the lifespan.
Accurate documentation of assembly and disassembly instructions empowers users to maintain and repair products, minimizing waste and promoting a more sustainable approach to product lifecycle management.
Design for Energy Efficiency
Engineers globally actively address questions such as, “Can we reduce noise and unneeded energy consumption in design?” and “Can we make our design more thermally efficient?” to pave the way for eco-friendly innovation.
Their goal is to pinpoint areas where energy is wasted, but don’t have the most efficient tools to accomplish that task. Modal analysis and thermal analysis enable more streamlined and environmentally conscious designs. Additionally, tools like Creo Flow Analysis optimizes flow efficiency to ensure that products operate with maximum efficiency, minimizing energy requirements without sacrificing performance.
Furthermore, selecting materials that demand less energy to manufacture and recycle adds another layer of sustainability to the design process and reduces the overall environmental impact from production to end-of-life disposal. Through these proactive measures, energy-efficient product design becomes a tangible pathway towards a more sustainable future.
Sustainable Design Solutions
Our suite of Creo design tools supports sustainable practices:
- Generative Design and Optimization: Refine and optimize designs for dematerialization and material reduction goals.
- Simulation and Behavioral Modeling: Analyze environmental impacts and optimize designs based on real-life use cases.
- Additive Manufacturing: Support lightweighting through lattice structures, reducing material consumption and energy requirements.
- Disassembly and Remanufacturing: Design for repair, refurbishment, and remanufacture, enhancing product lifecycle and minimizing waste.
Designing for sustainability benefits both the environment and businesses. Companies can significantly reduce their environmental footprint by considering dematerialization, disassembly, and behavioral modeling.
By partnering with EAC for solution identification and utilizing PTC’s comprehensive Creo design tools, companies can pave the way for a sustainable future while improving their bottom line. Let’s talk about how EAC can help you identify solutions to help your company embrace sustainable design practices today!
