Manufacturing – Accelerating the Journey to Net Zero

The manufacturing industry is responsible for fuelling consumption and production around the globe.

It is dependent on complex, multi-step supply chains and processes, which make up around a third of the word’s energy usage. This means that the manufacturing industry arguably has a great responsibility to support progress and implement changes to reach net zero and slow climate change and its consequences.

Thankfully, the industry seems to be acknowledging this responsibility and tackling the issue head on. The surge of net zero ambition perhaps comes from the shock and uncertainty of the past few years.

Following the pandemic, Brexit, political turmoil and economic crisis, manufacturers are now forced to put in place measures and failsafe procedures in order to manage crisis and prevent increasing costs.

This surge towards over planning and mapping for the future fortunately includes mapping for the impending crisis of climate change and ensuring that actions are taken to face this challenge.

Focused, targeted action.

A series of long- and short-term steps and changes are needed to improve sustainability performance and be a part of building a greener economy. These steps may include:

Connected Sustainability

In order to be fully effective, a sustainability plan cannot simply be applied to one project or one aspect of the industry.

A multi sectional approach is needed to ensure that the strategy works and is striving towards a greener outcome. Strategy needs to be woven and interconnected across an organisation, with easily accessible targets, realistic change and supported goals.

Strategy then needs to be checked, monitored and assessed in order to find faults and improve where necessary to ensure targets are met.

Decarbonisation

The UK government have set out targets for 2050 that focus heavily on the reduction of carbon emissions throughout businesses. This plan expects businesses to find alternative, renewable energy solutions in order to meet this goal.

Start with the fundamentals, understanding the dependence and uses of carbon resources across the business, before breaking these uses up and tackling them sectionally. In order to fully understand energy uses and costs, smart monitoring technology may be a favourable application, in order to fully understand the data and analytics behind the energy used across your organisation.

Supply Chain Adaptation and Resilience

Global supply chains are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected. Understanding the full journey of your supply chain and where efficiency is lacking is imperative when it comes to reducing carbon emissions and waste, in order to meet net zero goals.

Scope 3 emissions are becoming an increasing priority when it comes to the net zero journey of global organisations. Shockingly, only around 36% of global manufacturers are monitoring the sustainability of supply chains, so the industry has a long way to go if these targets are realistically going to be met.

Technological Innovation

Manpower and the ability to be business savvy isn’t always enough when it comes to the complexity of sustainability within your organisation.

Introducing technology, particularly IoT solutions can remove the difficulties and time it takes to effectively measure sustainability and the aspects of your business that could be hindering your sustainability goals.

Reaching net zero goals requires out of the box solutions, so consider the application of energy monitoring, fuel monitoring or perhaps temperature monitoring to identify where your organisation may be slipping in performance and efficiency.

Book a demo of the I-System with Invisible Systems today and find out more about how we can help you to accelerate your journey to a greener future.