Austria’s and Europe’s manufacturing industry is currently facing enormous pressure to reduce its CO2 emissions. Digital transformation may help, thereby enhancing competitiveness in terms of both ecological and economic considerations, through the utilization of digital tools for sustainable product design and production. However, ecological aspects are still rarely considered, largely due to the absence of a tool capable of accurately and precisely predicting the energy consumption of a product throughout the entire product creation process. As a result, the manufacturing industry currently estimates the ecological sustainability of products late in the design process, or even afterwards.
This is where REDUCE is pioneering: it develops – using artificial intelligence, knowledge-based models and innovative visualization techniques – a Decision Support Tool (DST) that helps product designers and production planners to predict energy and material/waste consumption, CO2 emissions and the costs associated with their decisions. However, to maximize the impact of this DST in the product development process, significant challenges need to be overcome.
