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Five ways engineers can infl uence ESG
E
ngineers can make a huge contribution to all aspects of their company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
strategy, as well as infl uence customers and the wider society, too. By considering solutions that are not only technical and commercial, but also ESG related, improvements can be part of their products’ design criteria. By challenging specifi cations and off ering alternative solutions with better ESG outcomes, engineers can have a pivotal and transformative role in this quest. Here are fi ve key engineering considerations:
1. Don’t over specify By making a series of small improvements that individually might have a negligible eff ect, signifi cant performance improvements can emerge when they are combined. Imagine if every embedded, desktop and server-side computer consumes 1W less – for billions of devices that’s thousands of megawatts saved! That’s without even considering other ways to save power.
Embedding additional capacity in a device off ers protection against future upgrades, increasing its in-service life. However, it is crucial not to over-specify, because these future, unidentifi ed requirements may never happen.
2. Don’t under specify
Equally important is the lifetime vs cost of ownership consideration for a device. Shaving off a Watt or two of its power consumption can be false economy if that device is so unreliable that a maintenance engineer has to make frequent on-site trips to fi x it.
On the computer side, under-specifying could mean overlooking commercial- grade PCs in favour of industrial-grade, fanless types. Equally important are the tools available in remote management, upgrade and fault diagnosis of the implemented systems. Using such tools helps reduce both the lifetime environmental impact and operational costs of the systems.
26 February 2023 | Automation
3. Think about edge gateways
Ask yourself: “Do you really need to replace everything?” when it comes to system updgrades.
Disposing of waste has a signifi cant environmental impact, and this is especially true in the electronics industry,
which uses many relatively harmful and rare substances in its products. In the industrial sector there are still a lot of older devices in service, produced at a time when the use of harmful materials was less regulated than today, and it is very important to deal with these properly. Instead of replacing an entire system, could some parts be retained? Say, a fl owmeter on a pipeline, or a PLC controlling a local factory process that might be working perfectly but is incompatible with a newly-implemented system. Instead of replacing the legacy device, an edge gateway can be used to convert between the communications and data models of the two systems, allowing the legacy device to remain in service. The notion of combining the function of several physical devices into a single edge device with a virtualised environment is already gaining a lot of traction in some applications like electricity substations.
4. Embrace AI and ML technology Advances in Artifi cial Intelligence (AI), especially those in Machine Learning (ML) and Edge Inference, are now more readily available and cheaper to implement, so they can be considered at the design phase of a system or an upgrade. AI enables continuous monitoring of machines, installations and processes, identifying negative trends in performance or out-of-bounds conditions before they aff ect operational outcomes. In turn this improves yields and operational effi ciency, all of which have a positive impact from an environmental perspective. AI coupled to optical systems monitors
By Marco Zampolli, IIoT Product Sales Director, Advantech
and controls access to restricted or unsafe areas, limiting access to authorised personnel or vehicles through face or number plate recognition. Boundary control improves safety by shutting down machines or processes if an unauthorised person enters a hazardous area. Detection and assessment of the number of people in an area feeds in to the environmental control systems, optimising the heating, ventilation and lighting for that area, in real time.
5. Consider sustainability We often look at the environmental impact of the fi nished device or system rather than its entire environmental impact – from the supplier of its raw materials to its manufacture. Also, how does the manufacturer get the energy for making it – from high-carbon sources or renewables? Is the manufacturer taking steps to improve its environmental impact by installing its own solar or wind energy generation, is it working toward replacing harmful and hazardous materials in its products, and so on?
All these questions may be diffi cult to get meaningful answers to but they are worth asking, to get a feel for how much environmental considerations are guiding the processes of suppliers today.
CONTACT:
Advantech
www.advantech.com
automationmagazine.co.uk
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