In January this year, MAKE UK published its Inspired Energy Net Zero Roadmap, setting out steps the sector would take to achieve this crucial goal. These include a goal for the UK’s manufacturing sector to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 67% by 2035 (compared to 2018 levels) by:
- supporting suppliers and customers to get to net zero, to reduce Scope 3 emissions;
- and helping companies to develop Net Zero products.
This focus on Scope 3 emissions is not by accident. According to figures from Deloitte, Scope 3 emissions - those that companies are indirectly rather than directly responsible for up and down their value chain - typically make up over 70% of an organisation’s Carbon Footprint. By their very nature, they are difficult for individual companies to control, with organisations becoming interdependent on their supply chain partners at every stage of the manufacturing, distribution and operational process.
But while this represents a real challenge for the sector, this interdependency is also key to helping the sector as a whole achieve its Net Zero commitments. While excessive carbon emissions at one stage of the supply chain can negatively impact companies up and down stream, so too carbon reduction initiatives at any stage can ripple positively up and down the value chain.
By effectively making organisations responsible for each other’s emissions, change can also be driven more quickly through the procurement process. While OEMs and public bodies may have greater time and resources to invest in initiatives to reduce their own carbon footprints, their procurement practices can also drive change along the value chain, in much the same way as the adoption of Kaizen principles across the industry was driven through a trickle down approach. As roll out becomes a compliance point, not simply a nice to have, early adopters can steal a real competitive advantage while playing a key part in improving the industry’s environmental performance.
So how can 5G help on this journey?
Accumulation of marginal gains
If every carbon reduction initiative pays dividends up and down the supply chain, even simple efficiency gains developed within smaller companies can have a snowball effect throughout the value chain. For example, as part of the 5G Testbeds and Trials programme, we have already seen how use of sensor technology can reduce the amount of time and energy required to find components and tooling in the stores and move it around the shop floor to where it is needed.
Remote monitoring of machinery can also be used to identify maintenance requirements at a far earlier stage, and certainly before machinery or component quality failure, optimising energy use and reducing waste and raw material requirements as a result.
Automated inspection processes can also identify quality issues at an earlier stage of the production process, reducing waste and the time machinery needs to operate for repeat runs, while real-time analysis of production status can support management teams to identify more effective use of production lines and equipment, as well as peaks and troughs in demand that could inform shift patterns to optimise energy use.
Supporting more agile shop-floor practices
Just as the adoption of Lean principles drove the third industrial revolution, 5G-enabled connectivity will also enable more agile shop-floor management as part of Industry 4.0. For example, for automotive manufacturers looking to 3D print components for a range of vehicles, from personal cars to commercial vans and heavy lorries, larger components will typically need more production space.
Traditionally this would have meant creating separate shop-floor layouts for each product range but 5G-powered connectivity can support operations teams to create more agile shop floor spaces.
Crucially, not only does this allow teams to cater responsively to different manufacturing requirements but, without the volume of technical infrastructure and cabling required to support analogue machinery, 5G supported plant can be moved around the shop-floor far more easily, supporting a more flexible and agile approach, with less downtime.
Transparent environmental reporting
As AE Aerospace’s glass factory project ably demonstrated, increased availably of data from every stage of the manufacturing process adds ever-greater traceability to production.
There is no reason this cannot be replicated to support more transparent carbon reporting processes, allowing companies at every stage of the supply chain to track individual elements that make up their Scope 3 emissions while supporting manufacturers of all sizes to meet industry reporting requirements and, in turn, win more business.
For example, our early Testbed and Trials work with QinetiQ (2019) identified a range of services that could form the basis of an industry ‘Kitemark’ to ensure 5G IoT Device and Platforms evolve to be inherently Secure by Design. A similar ‘Kitemark’ approach could be used for environmental targets, driving the ‘trickle down’ adoption of carbon tracking and reporting objectives across the whole supply-chain.
The interdependency of carbon reporting requirements undoubtedly provide a challenge for companies at every stage of the manufacturing supply chain but those very interdependencies also hold the key to reaching MAKE UK’s Net Zero target.
As sky rocketing energy prices highlight, it’s a commercially, as well as environmentally important goal. Is your manufacturing business ready to meet the challenge?
