Carbon Footprint in Onshape Assemblies

Theo_R · July 2023

Say you're trying to help solve humanity's biggest challenges (climate change)... and you design / engineer products.
You want to make better, more informed decisions during your design process.
You might already work with consultants, your organization might have a sustainability team, you might work in other platforms, have rules of thumb... or maybe you would benefit from insights within your design software as your starting point because you don't have access to other resources.

How do you do it today in Onshape?
(My feeling is that you can't, unless I'm mistaken).

What tools are available to help quantify carbon impact?
(Onshape or otherwise)

What's your workflow - if data leaves Onshape?

Looking for community experts to share their tips.
Interested to hear from users on past experiences and what they would like to see in a plugin.

Not an expert? If you think this is relevant to the Onshape community, please vote up, +1, or add a comment.

Thank you for your consideration!

S1mon · July 2023

How would a tool like that even work? To fully do the analysis, someone needs to know exactly where each part comes from, what materials it's made from, where they were sourced, how they were sourced, and how the part will be disposed of. Even the most professional analysis is an extreme approximation. The source of the electricity for some step in the supply chain may be an old coal powered power plant and later it comes from solar. There may be multiple approved vendors for hardware or other OTS small items. One week they're shipped on a boat from a responsible supplier, the next week they need to be over-night air-freighted from a distributor with little traceability.

Sure there are overall things that are likely true: less material = less carbon. Some materials are more recyclable (assuming anyone actually recycles it) or have lower impact during manufacture, but overall, this is a very difficult problem.

nick_papageorge073 · July 2023

Alnis made a custom feature to roughly estimate this about 6 months ago and shared it on one of the innovator’s insiders podcasts.

That said, this type of analysis is only as good as the data it’s fed, and that data will change as the wind blows:)

Theo_R · July 2023

@nick_papageorge073
Great thanks - I'll look for what Alnis created, sounds very interesting.

@S1mon
Agreed - the data changes on manufacturer location. I was wondering if known solution exist, so it's admittedly a little open-ended. Here's a few assumptions:

1. Directional insight
We would benefit greatly from directional insights. Ultimate accuracy is the goal, but even quantifying the factor of air shipment vs. boat would be helpful. Is it 2x? 10x? There is utility while being tolerant of some uncertainty of accuracy.

2. Analogy of Accounting (Costs in $)
I believe we can think of carbon emission like accounting for the cost (in $) per part. The costs are associated with transactions, and indirectly the transactions costs (shipping, etc) are related to the items (landed costs).

An ERP platform tracks costs as they fluctuate over time. Arguably we should be able to track/account for carbon as it fluctuates over time. We have accounting records for shipments (a business that loses track of costs goes bankrupt), the accounting records are potentially a foundation of some traceability / carbon impact.

3. Integrating Data to CAD
We can create ERP - CAD integrations. I have seen integrations to show costs for parts and assemblies in a CAD platform.

If the fields to hold carbon values exist in CAD, and carbon is tracked in ERP, then we can integrate and show designers / engineers carbon impact while they are making design decisions.

It is a very difficult problem - it is a lot of work to solve, it requires a lot of integration (both digital & cultural at the organization, collaborative teams working cross-functionally).

I believe that as designers / engineers we have a huge role to play in making things in the world, but that we are underserved by technology. I believe the tools should help us make the best decisions, and that carbon footprint should be a part of our decision making.

S1mon · July 2023

Much like FEA, some of the usefulness of the analysis depends on whether you're looking for an absolute number or a relative number. Relative percentages, or at least "did I make it stronger or weaker?" (or "did I increase or decrease the carbon footprint?") are more likely to be semi-believable. Absolute numbers are only likely to be accurate in very constrained situations.

Packaging and shipping can make huge impacts on the COGS and carbon footprint of a product. So many startups think that once they've designed the widget itself and 3D printed one and it sorta-kinda works, that they're ready to go into production and print money. There are so many things wrong with this that it's painful to list. Packaging, kitting and fulfillment are huge parts of the equation. Packaging of many small, inexpensive retail products can often be just as expensive as the product itself. Despite efforts of many well meaning brands and packaging designers to make those fancy packages more recyclable, the reality is that many customers are just tossing it all in the landfill.

For larger products, changing the dimensions of the box a seemingly small amount can radically change the number of units which fit in a shipping container - changing the economics of shipping and the carbon footprint. Part of how we're discussing the design of my companies next generation product is literally looking at how the overall size of the product itself affects the shipping box which affects the number of units which fit in a 40' container.

At the worst points of supply chain disruption from Covid, shipping prices which were normally $8k/container became $30k. Containers also ended up sitting on boats for days and weeks stacked up around various ports, just idling along, burning the cheapest, dirtiest fuel. How do you model that?

@nick_papageorge073 said "as the wind blows" - this is entirely true of the amount of fuel consumed by any shipping method. Weather and wind patterns are going to have huge impacts on fuel usage. Those cost fluctuations typically don't show up in the charges to the shipping customer, but fuel efficiency variability is definitely a huge part of the profitability (and carbon usage) of the shippers themselves. The widget makers ERP system isn't going to show this unless they are so big and vertically integrated that they're running their own vehicles.

If a product sits in a warehouse or a store for months, that uses energy (and ties up capital).

All processes have yield losses. Some much more than others. Hopefully these losses are reduced over time. Some processes chew through tooling much faster than others. That tooling costs time, money and carbon.

Lucas_Kuhns · July 2023

You may want to look at or at talk to the folks at aPriori. It costs a pretty penny (>$200k) but it's the best thing I've ever seen along this line of thinking. It would be super cool to have something built in but the cost to pull that off would have to be enormous. Before you can get to an accurate carbon footprint, you need to solve ALL the complexity of manufacturing processes. This is not something typically handled by engineers or their CAD systems (which I wish were not the case but sadly is the state of things today and the foreseeable future).

I wish there were features or a nice add-on app to Onshape that would be able to handle bill of process, methods of manufacturing, routing, whatever you want to call it type of information. It's crucial information both to the cost, manufacturability, and sustainability of a product.

Theo_R · July 2023

@S1mon agreed - thanks for the thoughtful comments. When we did work in Sweden with a large furnishings brand we saw first hand the impact of product dimensions, packaging and shipping container optimization.
Relative numbers (directional insight) and "wind blows" are points well made.

@Lucas_Kuhns thanks - I'll be checking out aPriori.

nick_papageorge073 · July 2023

Was this just fun conversation? Or is your company seriously looking for a software (or other) solution to figure this out? I don't think I've heard of anyone except companies like Apple who even "claim" they do this, and even in their case it might be marketing more than reality.

michael3424 · July 2023

Does this subject have anything to do with "life cycle analysis"?

Some of the US DOE National Labs have research programs looking into this and might be a source for data or approaches to generating data.

wayne_sauder · July 2023

Just an interesting note, Fusion 360 has been attempting this with generative design. I do think they are using aPriori.

Theo_R · July 2023

@nick_papageorge073

I was hoping the forum users would be able to share platforms or tools that can offer some directional insights.
Yes - some smaller companies are doing this as well.
I'm more familiar with the tracking carbon at the enterprise level - we're using a platform to track Scope 1 & 2, with select Scope 3 emissions.

It is said that 80% of a product's impact is determined during design & engineering phase. We want our team to be better informed about decisions we make at our organization.

We also have wanted to explore platform solutions at the product level to quantify in terms of kg CO2e.

Theo_R · July 2023

@michael3424
Yes this is known as Life Cycle Analysis / Life Cycle Assessment.
You have the first mention of LCA on the Onshape forum.

steve_shubin · July 2023

Theo_R said:

I was hoping the forum users would be able to share platforms or tools that can offer some DIRECTIONAL INSIGHTS

I'm more familiar with the tracking CARBON AT THE ENTERPRISE LEVEL

I don’t know if this will help at all or not.

The AEC side of the CAD world (architecture/engineering/construction) has been dealing with green issues for a while, such as minimizing energy and water consumption

Some of the programs I have, have tools along these lines, but I’ve never played with them to any great extent

When you said Life Cycle Analysis, that got me to wondering if one of my CAD programs had any such thing

I did a search and found this, and was wondering if this can give any DIRECTIONAL INSIGHTS as to how approach the matter —

https://app-help.vectorworks.net/2022/eng/assets/docs/VECCUserGuide.pdf

As far as you’re mentioning carbon at the enterprise level, does that have anything to do with making buildings more efficient ?

steve_shubin · July 2023

If this survives peer review, this might go a long way to reducing carbon

https://archive.is/kIX9s

Theo_R · July 2023

nick_papageorge073 said:

Alnis made a custom feature to roughly estimate this about 6 months ago and shared it on one of the innovator’s insiders podcasts.

That said, this type of analysis is only as good as the data it’s fed, and that data will change as the wind blows:)

I was looking for some exactly like this.

28:14 min in to the podcast here.

https://youtu.be/yOt-uFNkS4w?t=1694

@alnis I'd love to learn more about this! I'll attempt to reach you separately as well.

alnis · July 2023

@Theo_R yes, here it is! Note — it is extremely rudimentary and is a proof of concept, not for production use yet.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cded0321e39228218e77c85a/v/67d9eb3e710579c9d5517dd2/e/3aad4dbd4e5dc37bee6647f3

As for data — I pulled a couple of materials from makeitfrom. So while they are probably in the right ballpark, considerations like shipping, material source, and recycling are not taken into account yet.

I am currently investigating what Onshape could do with sustainability — will post more here soon. This thread has been helpful, and I look forward to chatting more with everyone who is interested. In any case, sustainable product design is something that Onshape is currently looking into, and input & ideas are super welcome! Thanks!

wout_theelen541 · August 2023

I just opened up fusion 360 this morning and they have a new add-in for maker site.
https://makersite.io/ that might be an interesting angle to go on.
I took a look at the LCA and that seems interesting especially if you could to allow users to update environmental impacts to account for their own suppliers,
Once CAD becomes available it would be interesting to incorporate some more in depth LCA ie. amount of material used, scrapped perhaps even an estimate on run time for the machine to get added in. I would just list this as another part property to get pushed into any ERP system you're using.

ede_N_ · August 2023

I believe you can do simulations in blender but otherwise I wouldn't have any knowledge as I feel like that is quite a bit out of place for Onshape personally. But theres other programs to simulate fluids, gasses and other things moving.

Carbon Footprint in Onshape Assemblies

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