Fred Smith
Autodesk’s PLM solution, Fusion Manage enhances sustainability in product design and manufacturing through efficient data management, material selection, lifecycle assessments, design optimization, supply chain collaboration, change management, and end-of-life planning, aiding businesses in achieving sustainability goals and benefiting their bottom line.
Autodesk is a market leader in sustainability, ranking #1 among software companies by Corporate Knights Global 100 in 2024. This was accomplished through diligent attention to many types of sustainability including clean water, affordable and clean energy, economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities, responsible consumption and production, and climate action.
Many Autodesk products offer capabilities that enhance our customers’ ability to also address their own sustainability goals relating to climate, economics, health, education, equality, energy, safety, resilience, land use, peace, and partnerships. They accomplish all this in ways as varied as their products, and they often do it with a benefit to their bottom lines. In short, Autodesk not only helps customers “do good” but also “do good well.”
A key capability for maximizing sustainability is often a matter of efficient data management and analysis. Autodesk’s product lifecycle management (PLM) solution, Autodesk Fusion Manage, can help increase the sustainability of physical products by enabling better management of product lifecycle processes. Here are some important ways that Fusion Manage drives sustainability.
Driving sustainability through PLM
1. Material selection and compliance
- Fusion Manage supports the selection of sustainable materials by integrating with databases of eco-friendly materials and ensuring compliance with environmental regulations like RoHS and REACH.
- It helps track and manage the use of recycled or renewable materials in product designs.
- The PLM solution is flexible enough to support not only today’s regulations and standards, but also those that the future will bring. Fusion Manage helps ensure that you aren’t stuck with sustainability goals that are not attainable.
2. Lifecycle assessment
- The PLM solution enables lifecycle assessments (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of a product from design to disposal.
- It provides insights into energy consumption, carbon footprint, and waste generation, helping companies make informed decisions to reduce environmental impact.
- Fusion Manage integrates securely with current and future data sources, both in the cloud and behind your firewall.
3. Design for sustainability
- Fusion Manage facilitates “Design for Sustainability” by allowing engineers to incorporate sustainability objectives into the design process.
- It supports generative design tools that optimize for minimal material use, energy efficiency, and recyclability.
- The value of AI requires large quantities of high-value data. Fusion Manage secures your master product data, protecting its value, and preparing your organization for what’s to come.
4. Supply chain optimization
- The PLM solution enhances supply chain collaboration, ensuring that suppliers adhere to sustainability standards.
- Through rigorous control of materials and components, manufacturers can ensure that only approved items from vetted sources make it into their supply chains.
- It helps identify and mitigate risks associated with sourcing unsustainable materials or practices.
- Managing not only what goes into products, but also where items were sourced and sold, can reduce lead times and shipping costs.
5. Change management
- Fusion Manage streamlines change management processes, ensuring that sustainability improvements can be implemented efficiently without disrupting production.
- Automated reviews and approvals ensure efficient release processes that minimize time-to-release, and consequently, energy consumption and cost-of-goods sold.
6. Data-driven decision making
- By centralizing product data, Fusion Manage provides analytics and reporting tools to monitor sustainability metrics and track progress toward sustainability goals.
- Project execution can be optimized to reduce time-to-completion and increase the number of projects executed annually.
- PLM data can be integrated into enterprise analytics frameworks that allow aggregation and reporting of data across planning, design, quality, manufacturing, and logistics.
7. End-of-life management
- The PLM solution supports planning for product end-of-life, including recycling, remanufacturing, or safe disposal, to minimize waste by rolling up materials, costs, risks, and schedules across multiple products and product lines.
- Use of PLM up and down supply chains enables circular economies where one product’s waste is another’s raw material.
Autodesk Fusion Manage: Connect People, Processes, and Data
Streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and gain real-time visibility with PLM.
Nearly all manufacturers strive to produce valuable products. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the benefits of also making products that their customers are proud to purchase. Use of certain materials improve performance, strength, weight, and reliability. Shortening a supply chain reduces time-to-market, and adds pride and brand value to specific communities. Knowing that “no animals were harmed in the making of this product” or “made from only recycled materials” adds to the price premium that consumers are willing to pay.
However, making many small enhancements requires robust data management to ensure these outcomes. And no business would put in the effort required to ensure sustainability unless the efforts reduced the risks and administrative costs.
Fusion Manage provides automation, ease-of-use, flexibility, and integrations that drive down the costs of sustainability, which is sustainability itself.
Do good well. You’ll be glad you did.