Sustainable Manufacturing Series: How Automation Can Help Manufacturers Reduce Waste

POSTED 08/14/2025  | By: Aaron Hand, TECH B2B Marketing, A3 Contributing Editor

Rupture reduction in manufacturing isn’t correct correct prepare — it’s a strategic crucial. For manufacturers navigating at the present time’s aggressive, helpful resource-constrained financial system, minimizing waste interprets instantly into greater revenue margins and long-term sustainability.

From a revenue viewpoint, waste is a hidden rate lurking in every corner of the production line. Whether or no longer it’s excess subject cloth scrap, machine downtime, energy inefficiencies, or overproduction, every wasted enter drains resources and erodes margins. Streamlining operations to diminish this waste results in decrease operational costs, more predictable production, and improved throughput — all of which pressure profitability.

From an environmental standpoint, cutting back waste is crucial to frightened a manufacturer’s carbon footprint. The arena shift toward greener practices — pushed in immense section by increasing regulatory and person pressures — makes sustainability a industry necessity. Efficient spend of materials, energy, and water no longer most productive reduces environmental impact but additionally positions manufacturers as to blame companions in a circular financial system.

Finally, waste reduction helps a twin aim: doing more with less, for the correct of every the industry and the planet. Whether or no longer the incentive is compliance, rate financial savings, save recognition, or ethical responsibility, manufacturers who prioritize waste reduction are better outfitted to thrive in a altering world.

Automation and digital technologies play a giant series of mighty roles in cutting back waste in manufacturing. Computerized systems can fabricate obligations with micron-level precision and repeat them continuously with out deviation, cutting back subject cloth waste from errors devour overcutting, misalignment, or unpleasant meeting. Exact-time monitoring and records analytics can optimize processes on the wing. Robotic systems and dapper controllers will doubtless be programmed to make spend of correct the correct amount of raw materials, energy, and water — minimizing overuse and waste. Imaginative and prescient-guided robotics and AI-powered motion serve watch over allow systems to adjust to variability in parts and orientations, cutting back the necessity for overproduction and decreasing the probability of discarding non-normal parts. The checklist goes on and on.

Robotics: Sustainable at Its Core

“The entire lot we attain in robotics is set sustainability,” contends Nicolas Durand, vice president and normal supervisor at ABB Robotics Canada. “Sustainability, if it’s the reverse of waste — here is how every robotic project is born. We’re attempting at a project where we like got to serve efficiency, we like got to serve throughput, we like got to serve safety — all parts of correct sustainability.”

Detailing how robots contribute to this rate proposition right via an A3 webinar, Leveraging Developed Manufacturing Technologies to Power Sustainability, Durand pointed first to sheer longevity. About a of ABB’s robots like been in spend for more than 35 years, he notes. “I surely had a buyer call me from the Ottawa space, and he had a robot from 1974 that he was pulling out of production, and he asked me if I wished to aquire it relieve to construct it in our museum,” he says. “That offers you a draw of correct how accurate these robots are.”

Past that, the huge majority of ABB’s robots outdated in the automotive industry receive remanufactured to lengthen their lifetime. “That’s a beautiful spectacular stat, in particular must you take into narrative what which arrangement from a sustainability standpoint,” Durand adds. “Building a robot vs. remanufacturing a robot goes to diminish your carbon footprint by about 75%. So, every time that we receive to remanufacture a robot and ship a brand novel robot out with a brand novel rent on lifestyles, we’re surely making improvements to the carbon footprint.”

As much as twenty% of those robots even receive a third lifestyles, Durand notes. “After they’ve been retooled and remanufactured, when they attain relieve 10, 15 years later, we surely retool them and ship them relieve out for one other 10 years.”

This refurbishment/circularity component is a subject we’ll focus on in extra detail in our third installment in this Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence, later this year.

Achieving Robotic Energy

By manner of cutting back the carbon footprint of a conventional robot, 70-75% of that comes from the spend section, Durand notes. “How we are able to pressure the efficiency of the robots is an infinite lever that we are able to action,” he says.

Some distance from it costing money to originate sustainability efforts, the associated rate reduction in energy creates a virtuous cycle in which it makes economic sense for companies to make investments in energy reduction. “On the pause of the day, these things are self-funding the total efforts that we’re doing,” Durand says. “Most of our prospects at the present time like some form of an energy efficiency draw.”

With hundreds of thousands of business robots working in North The United States at the present time, cutting back energy efficiency for every of those by 10% could presumably perchance also relate necessary energy financial savings for the enviornment of manufacturing. Robots are changing into the next low-inserting fruit for energy reduction, Durand says. “Every person looked at HVAC, everyone looked at lighting fixtures, everyone looked at no subject. Now we’re getting to the level where robots are initiating to be in the limelight.”

It’s no shock, he adds, that ABB is spending a range of time — via instrument win and energy efficiency as a entire — to take cling of how to tackle that section of the robotic lifecycle.

Optimizing a robot’s direction is correct one section of that equation. That by myself could presumably perchance also no longer most productive serve the productiveness of the robot but additionally present a more energy-efficient direction. “With the automatic direction planning that ABB has developed, we’re ready to acknowledge at an present robot that is running accessible and appreciate at what more or less improvements we would also generate if we had been to serve those paths,” Durand says.

To study more about how manufacturers are effectively managing robot energy consumption, study the first article in our Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence.

Hygienic Construct Alleviates Ruined Product, Consumables

By manner of cutting back waste on the manufacturing ground, Kollmorgen performs an infinite section with its motors’ washdown capabilities in food applications, in particular in the handling of raw proteins or grains.

“The skill to attain washdown and cleanup instant and effectively in a surely little timeframe is an infinite section of the efficiencies — cutting back downtime and making improvements to uptime and ROI and things of that nature,” says Chris Cooper, senior director, product administration at Kollmorgen.

Such washdown capabilities can play a necessary role in cutting back waste in manufacturing by making improvements to hygiene, durability, and operational efficiency — in particular in sectors devour food and beverage, prescribed tablets, and packaging.

The skill to withstand excessive-rigidity cleaning and vicious sanitizing brokers helps to shield sterile prerequisites, stopping irascible-contamination or product spoilage that will presumably presumably perchance in another case lead to entire batches being scrapped.

Kollmorgen’s AKMH series is made up of hygienic, stainless-steel motors designed for food contact and washdown zones. “That person solution is one of essentially the most solid, sturdy strategies for excessive-rigidity caustic washdown, in particular areas where you would favor like some more or less sanitizing agent, no longer correct excessive-rigidity water,” Cooper says.

The AKMA series is additionally made up of washdown-succesful motors but in anodized housing, so it’ll tackle minimal caustics and soaps. “Ours is a correct anodized aluminum, and it is miles a rounded housed motor, so that you don’t receive locations for things to leisure corresponding to probabilities are you’ll presumably presumably perchance on a square physique motor.”

The spend of motors that attain no longer just like the correct more or less hygienic aspects can cause necessary production components in washdown environments. This was the case for a Kollmorgen buyer processing and packaging sausage in Wisconsin.

“They had been having hundreds components with water ingress. As probabilities are you’ll presumably presumably believe, when they mosey in and they also spray those motors down, you receive water ingress around the shaft or you receive water ingress around the strategies housing, and it frequently corrodes the motor electronics or bearings,” Cooper says. “Obviously, at the same time as you can need a fault, the machine jams, and you can need a range of things with product loss. As the motor loses reference, it begins to jam, and you either breeze up a knife or breeze up manufactured product or consumable product.”

The motors being outdated had been struggling with the excessive-rigidity, excessive-caustic washdown of the equipment, inflicting the machine to jam many times. Kollmorgen modified the competitor’s motors with its AKMH servo motors — collectively with working instantly with the competitor’s drives to contain the correct strategies protocol — and eliminated the difficulty.

Cutting back Hardware Rupture

Kollmorgen additionally offers servo drives that serve a lot of Ethernet fieldbus protocols, collectively with EtherCAT, CANopen, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, SERCOS, and SynqNet. This performs a job in cutting back the necessity for excess inventory, minimizing the spares required.

By consolidating a lot of verbal exchange strategies into one pressure platform, manufacturers can decrease hardware variation, integration time, engineering complexity, and downtime right via commissioning or reconfiguration.

A Holistic Viewpoint

Siemens uses synthetic intelligence (AI) and numerous digital technologies to receive a broader appreciate at the huge sigh of energy and subject cloth financial savings. “Our draw to waste reduction and automation combines AI-powered operator assistance, exact-time monitoring, and predictive analytics to tackle waste reduction from a holistic standpoint — the spend of Copilot assistants for optimal resolution-making, digital twin simulations for route of automation, and built-in knowledge analytics to connect the shop ground operations with endeavor systems,” says Phillip Cannon, buyer solution architect for Siemens.

Saving energy in manufacturing, as an illustration, isn’t as easy as turning machines off for the weekend the identical manner you’d flip the lights off at the same time as you mosey away a room. In case you flip that machine relieve on Monday morning and restart production with out going via an acceptable warm-up length, probabilities are you’ll presumably presumably correct as effectively be growing heinous product.

“Having sensors in impart with a aim to detect all of this allows us to effectively in the reduction of waste,” Cannon says. “We’re maximizing total productiveness and minimizing waste.”

A Ideas Is a Unpleasant Thing to Rupture

Every production facility tries to be aware of losing time, energy, or materials. But Siemens likes to focus on a fourth more or less waste — knowledge waste.

Cannon aspects to the legions of retiring engineers who shield years of recordsdata of their heads. Siemens partnered with a machine store lately that was about to lose its senior machinist — and his decades of expertise — to retirement.

The director of the firm was concerned that he’d no longer be ready to head to the machinist (Ron) and query him questions to troubleshoot systems. Ron gave about a year’s peek, so right via that time, the director house out to grab as powerful knowledge as he could presumably perchance also from him.

“He didn’t like any belief he was going to companion with us at the time, but for a year, he tranquil all correspondence with Ron,” Cannon says. “By the time he ended up partnering with us, we keep forth the premise of our Industrial Copilot strategies. He took that knowledge and keep it in and now has a Copilot that is trained to be AI-flee. Now he feeds it questions to impeach it things he would frequently query Ron, and he has said it’s noteworthy — the style it solutions him, it is as if Ron remains to be there.”

Cannon emphasizes how crucial it is to every every so often receive the answer, “I don’t know.” It aspects to the distinction between public AI providers and products and an industrial chatbot that has been trained on a explicit pool of recordsdata.

“If I correct hop on the Web and query any helpful resource, it’s going to quiz the Web and attain relieve with one thing, and I surely like to alarm in regards to the validity of that recordsdata,” Cannon says. “In case you can need trained your bot to most productive pull from a clear knowledge lake, probabilities are you’ll presumably presumably receive that response of ‘I don’t know.’ And that’s crucial at the same time as you’re attempting at it from an industry standpoint.”

For many of Siemens’ prospects, the Industrial Copilot offers a kind to better prepare young workers who could presumably perchance no longer like a protracted-time employee to mentor them. They’ve been ready to make spend of the Copilot instrument to grab knowledge and offers guidance to more moderen workers, efficiently attaining a discount in practicing time as effectively as a discount in operator errors, Cannon says.

Automation as a Catalyst for Sustainable Transformation

As manufacturers push toward a more sustainable future, automation continues to teach itself as a sturdy enabler of waste reduction. A diversity of technologies are no longer most productive optimizing efficiency; they’re extending equipment lifecycles, minimizing subject cloth loss, and preserving crucial knowledge across generations.

By embracing automation with sustainability in thoughts, manufacturers can decrease costs and environmental impact whereas additionally building more resilient and future-ready operations. In our subsequent installment of the Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence, we’ll detect how robot refurbishment is taking part in an more and more crucial role in the circular financial system — giving automation sources a 2d, and even third, lifestyles on the manufacturing facility ground.