Dassault Systèmes today announced the launch of “Sustainable Innovation Intelligence,” its life cycle assessment solution that enables companies to minimise the environmental impacts of the products, materials and processes they create and help drive the circular economy. Fully embedded in Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform and covering the entire value chain, the cloud-based solution uniquely integrates the ecoinvent database on the impacts of more than 18,000 industrial and agricultural processes, into virtual design, product development, manufacturing engineering, operations and logistics.
“Collectively building a sustainable economy requires transforming the sustainable innovation process, from extracting raw materials to usage, reuse and recycling,” said Florence Verzelen, Executive Vice President, Industry, Marketing and Sustainability, Dassault Systèmes. “Whether in manufacturing, infrastructure and cities or life sciences, data science experiences that combine LCA capabilities with virtual twin technology offer companies new ways to innovate by understanding how their decisions affect natural resources, ecosystems and health. Through our 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we aim to help companies contribute to the United Nations’ ‘Decade of Action’ and thrive while doing so.”
Many businesses are working to reduce emissions in line with climate science and are aiming to develop more circular business models by 2030 by redesigning their product lines and manufacturing systems. However, most business solutions on the market today are still focused on measuring the footprint of yesterday’s economy, retroactively. To drive disruptive sustainable innovation, companies need to integrate ecodesign principles in the upstream thinking about their future products and processes before there is any environmental impact in the real world. Virtual universes provide this opportunity.
By combining LCA data with virtual twin technology, “Sustainable Innovation Intelligence” will empower LCA specialists, industrial designers, product engineers and manufacturing engineers to create circular life cycles by setting up sustainability requirements early on and collaboratively driving them throughout the design, product development and manufacturing engineering phases. It integrates supply of materials, design, manufacturing, operations, logistics, sales, marketing, and end-of-life management, providing real-time insights that allow teams to identify problems or improvements virtually before acting on them, and ensure traceability and reliability.
“Sustainable Innovation Intelligence” relies on the life cycle inventory database of the not-for-profit ecoinvent Association, whose datasets measure and provide information on the natural resources withdrawn from the environment, the pollution released into water and soil, the emissions released into air, the products demanded from other processes, and the products, co-products and waste produced in diverse sectors on global and regional levels.
“Our partnership with Dassault Systèmes is the first one with a software company in which our database is used at the very beginning of the product and manufacturing engineering processes for sustainability assessments,” said Emilia Moreno Ruiz, Interim Director, ecoinvent Association. “LCA brings the metrics needed to evaluate environmental impacts across the product lifecycle. Integrating that with virtual twin technology opens new possibilities to address these impacts early on.”
