Bettering the sustainability of producing entails optimizing total product lifecycles — from materials sourcing and transportation to design, manufacturing, distribution and end-of-life disposal.
In response to the Worldwide Power Company, decreasing the carbon footprint of commercial manufacturing by simply 1% may save 90 million tons of CO₂ emissions yearly. That’s equal to taking greater than 20 million gasoline-powered automobiles off the highway every year.
Applied sciences corresponding to digital twins and accelerated computing are enabling producers to cut back emissions, improve power effectivity and meet the rising demand for environmentally aware manufacturing.
Siemens and NVIDIA are on the forefront of growing applied sciences that assist prospects obtain their sustainability objectives and enhance manufacturing processes.
Key Challenges in Sustainable Manufacturing
Balancing sustainability with enterprise goals like profitability stays a prime concern for producers. A examine by Ernst & Younger in 2022 discovered that digital twins can scale back building prices by as much as 35%, underscoring the shut hyperlink between useful resource consumption and building bills.
But, one of many greatest challenges in driving sustainable manufacturing and decreasing overhead is the presence of silos between departments, totally different vegetation throughout the similar group and throughout manufacturing groups. These silos come up from quite a lot of points, together with conflicting priorities and incentives, a scarcity of widespread energy-efficiency metrics and language, and the necessity for brand new abilities and options to bridge these gaps.
Information administration additionally presents a hurdle, with many producers struggling to show huge quantities of knowledge into actionable insights — notably these that may affect sustainability objectives.
In response to a case examine by The Producer, 1 / 4 of respondents surveyed acknowledged that their information shortcomings negatively affect power effectivity and environmental sustainability, with almost a 3rd reporting that information is siloed to native use instances.
Addressing these challenges requires revolutionary approaches that break down limitations and use information to drive sustainability. Performing as a central hub for info, digital twin know-how is proving to be a necessary software on this effort.
The Function of Digital Twins in Sustainable Manufacturing
Industrial-scale digital twins constructed on the NVIDIA Omniverse improvement platform and Common Scene Description (OpenUSD) are reworking how producers method sustainability and scalability.
These applied sciences energy digital twins that take engineering information from numerous sources and contextualize it as it could seem in the true world. This breaks down info silos and provides a holistic view that may be shared throughout groups — from engineering to gross sales and advertising and marketing.
This enhanced visibility allows engineers and designers to simulate and optimize product designs, facility layouts, power use and manufacturing processes earlier than bodily manufacturing begins. That permits for deeper insights and collaboration by serving to stakeholders make extra knowledgeable selections to enhance effectivity and scale back pricey errors and last-minute modifications that can lead to important waste.
To additional rework how merchandise and experiences are designed and manufactured, Siemens is integrating NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud utility programming interfaces into its Siemens Xcelerator platform, beginning with Teamcenter X, its cloud-based product lifecycle administration software program.
These integrations allow Siemens to convey the facility of photorealistic visualization to advanced engineering information and workflows, permitting corporations to create physics-based digital twins that assist get rid of workflow waste and errors.
Siemens and NVIDIA have demonstrated how corporations like HD Hyundai, a pacesetter in sustainable ship manufacturing, are utilizing these new capabilities to visualise and work together with advanced engineering information at new ranges of scale and constancy.
HD Hyundai is unifying and visualizing advanced engineering initiatives immediately inside Teamcenter X.
Physics-based digital twins are additionally being utilized to check and validate robotics and bodily AI earlier than they’re deployed into real-world manufacturing services.
Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics producer, has launched a digital plant that pushes the boundaries of commercial automation. Foxconn’s digital twin platform, constructed on Omniverse and NVIDIA Isaac, replicates a brand new manufacturing unit within the Guadalajara, Mexico, electronics hub to permit engineers to optimize processes and prepare robots for environment friendly manufacturing of NVIDIA Blackwell programs.
By simulating the manufacturing unit setting, engineers can decide the very best placement for heavy robotic arms, optimize motion and maximize secure operations whereas strategically positioning 1000’s of sensors and video cameras to watch the complete manufacturing course of.
Using digital twins, like these in Foxconn’s digital manufacturing unit, is changing into more and more widespread in industrial settings for simulation and testing.
Foxconn’s chairman, Younger Liu, highlighted how the digital twin will result in enhanced automation and effectivity, leading to important financial savings in time, value and power. The corporate expects to extend manufacturing effectivity whereas decreasing power consumption by over 30% yearly.
By connecting information from Siemens Xcelerator software program to its platform constructed on NVIDIA Omniverse and OpenUSD, the digital plant permits Foxconn to design and prepare robots in a practical, simulated setting, revolutionizing its method to automation and sustainable manufacturing.
Making Each Watt Rely
One consideration for industries all over the place is how the rising demand for AI is outpacing the adoption of renewable power. This implies enterprise leaders, notably manufacturing plant and information heart operators, should maximize power effectivity and guarantee each watt is utilized successfully to steadiness decarbonization efforts alongside AI development.
The most effective and easiest technique of optimizing power use is to speed up each doable workload.
Utilizing accelerated computing platforms that combine each GPUs and CPUs, producers can considerably improve computational effectivity.
GPUs, particularly designed for dealing with advanced calculations, can outperform conventional CPU-only programs in AI duties. These programs will be as much as 20x extra power environment friendly relating to AI inference and coaching.
This leap in effectivity has fueled substantial positive aspects over the previous decade, enabling AI to handle extra advanced challenges whereas sustaining energy-efficient operations.
Constructing on these advances, companies can additional scale back their environmental affect by adopting key power administration methods. These embrace implementing power demand administration and effectivity measures, scaling battery storage for short-duration energy outages, securing renewable power sources for baseload electrical energy, utilizing renewable fuels for backup era and exploring revolutionary concepts like warmth reuse.
Be part of the Siemens and NVIDIA session on the 7X24 Trade 2024 Fall Convention to find how digital twins and AI are driving sustainable options throughout information facilities.
The Way forward for Sustainable Manufacturing: Industrial Digitalization
The subsequent frontier in manufacturing is the convergence of the digital and bodily worlds in what is called industrial digitalization, or the “industrial metaverse.” Right here, digital twins grow to be much more immersive and interactive, permitting producers to make data-driven selections quicker than ever.
“We are going to revolutionize how merchandise and experiences are designed, manufactured and serviced,” mentioned Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens AG. “On the trail to the economic metaverse, this subsequent era of commercial software program allows prospects to expertise merchandise as they’d in the true world: in context, in gorgeous realism and — sooner or later — work together with them by pure language enter.”
Main the Approach With Digital Twins and Sustainable Computing
Siemens and NVIDIA’s collaboration showcases the facility of digital twins and accelerated computing for decreasing the environmental affect attributable to the manufacturing business yearly. By leveraging superior simulations, AI insights and real-time information, producers can scale back waste and enhance power effectivity on their path to decarbonization.
Study extra about how Siemens and NVIDIA are accelerating sustainable manufacturing.
Examine NVIDIA’s sustainable computing efforts and take a look at the energy-efficiency calculator to find potential power and emissions financial savings.