Sustainable Manufacturing Series: How Automation Can Help Manufacturers Reduce Waste

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

Atomize reduction in manufacturing isn’t factual correct follow — it’s a strategic crucial. For producers navigating this present day’s aggressive, useful resource-constrained economic system, minimizing waste interprets straight away into elevated profit margins and long-term sustainability.

From a profit level of view, waste is a hidden mark lurking in each and every nook of the production line. Whether or now not it’s excess fabric scrap, machine downtime, vitality inefficiencies, or overproduction, each and every wasted input drains sources and erodes margins. Streamlining operations to reduce this waste results in lower operational charges, extra predictable production, and improved throughput — all of which drive profitability.

From an environmental standpoint, reducing waste is most considerable to panicked a manufacturer’s carbon footprint. The worldwide shift in direction of greener practices — driven in natty piece by growing regulatory and user pressures — makes sustainability a exchange necessity. Atmosphere pleasant use of materials, vitality, and water now not finest reduces environmental impact nonetheless moreover positions producers as responsible partners in a round economic system.

In the break, waste reduction helps a twin aim: doing extra with much less, for the correct of each and every the exchange and the planet. Whether or now not the motivation is compliance, mark financial savings, establish recognition, or moral responsibility, producers who prioritize waste reduction are greater equipped to thrive in a altering world.

Automation and digital applied sciences play a elephantine need of a need to have roles in reducing waste in manufacturing. Automated programs can originate duties with micron-level precision and repeat them continually with out deviation, reducing fabric waste from errors esteem overcutting, misalignment, or damaging assembly. Exact-time monitoring and records analytics can optimize processes on the waft. Robotic programs and tidy controllers might per chance maybe very neatly be programmed to use factual the gorgeous amount of raw materials, vitality, and water — minimizing overuse and waste. Imaginative and prescient-guided robotics and AI-powered inch protect watch over allow programs to alter to variability in substances and orientations, reducing the need for overproduction and lowering the possibility of discarding non-identical old substances. The checklist goes on and on.

Robotics: Sustainable at Its Core

“All the pieces we design in robotics is set sustainability,” contends Nicolas Durand, vice chairman and overall manager at ABB Robotics Canada. “Sustainability, if it’s the reverse of waste — that is how each and every robotic mission is born. We’re having a look at a mission the establish aside we would like to make stronger effectivity, we would like to make stronger throughput, we would like to make stronger safety — all substances of correct sustainability.”

Detailing how robots make contributions to this rate proposition all over an A3 webinar, Leveraging Evolved Manufacturing Technologies to Pressure Sustainability, Durand pointed first to sheer longevity. A few of ABB’s robots were in use for greater than 35 years, he notes. “I genuinely had a buyer name me from the Ottawa establish aside, and he had a robot from 1974 that he used to be pulling out of production, and he asked me if I wanted to aquire it succor to ranking it in our museum,” he says. “That presents you a technique of factual how steady these robots are.”

Beyond that, near to all of ABB’s robots mature in the automobile exchange fetch remanufactured to extend their lifetime. “That’s a quite spectacular stat, especially whenever you happen to suspect about what meaning from a sustainability standpoint,” Durand adds. “Building a robot vs. remanufacturing a robot is going to reduce your carbon footprint by about 75%. So, each and every time that we fetch to remanufacture a robot and send a new robot out with a new rent on lifestyles, we’re indubitably bettering the carbon footprint.”

As much as 20% of these robots even fetch a third lifestyles, Durand notes. “After they’ve been retooled and remanufactured, after they arrive succor 10, 15 years later, we indubitably retool them and send them succor out for but any other 10 years.”

This refurbishment/circularity insist is a topic topic we’ll discuss in additional detail in our third installment on this Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence, later this year.

Reaching Robotic Vitality

In the case of reducing the carbon footprint of a identical old robot, 70-75% of that comes from the use phase, Durand notes. “How we can drive the effectivity of the robots is a large lever that we can action,” he says.

Some distance from it costing cash to provoke sustainability efforts, the price reduction in vitality creates a virtuous cycle whereby it makes economic sense for firms to make investments in vitality reduction. “At the head of the day, this stuff are self-funding all of the efforts that we are doing,” Durand says. “Most of our possibilities this present day have some ranking of an vitality effectivity approach.”

With many of of hundreds of industrial robots working in North The usa this present day, reducing vitality effectivity for every and every of these by 10% might per chance maybe maybe bring valuable vitality financial savings for the arena of manufacturing. Robots are changing into the next low-hanging fruit for vitality reduction, Durand says. “Each person regarded at HVAC, each person regarded at lighting, each person regarded at whatever. Now we’re getting to the level the establish aside robots are starting to be in the limelight.”

It’s no surprise, he adds, that ABB is spending quite loads of time — thru application originate and vitality effectivity as a entire — to like how to accommodate that piece of the robotic lifecycle.

Optimizing a robot’s direction is factual one piece of that equation. That on my own might per chance maybe maybe now not finest make stronger the productivity of the robot nonetheless moreover present a extra vitality-efficient direction. “With the automatic direction planning that ABB has developed, we’re in an enviornment to see at an existing robot that is operating available in the market and see at what extra or much less improvements shall we generate if we were to make stronger these paths,” Durand says.

To learn extra about how producers are successfully managing robot vitality consumption, learn the first article in our Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence.

Hygienic Contain Alleviates Ruined Product, Consumables

In the case of reducing waste on the manufacturing floor, Kollmorgen plays a elephantine piece with its motors’ washdown capabilities in food applications, namely in the dealing with of raw proteins or grains.

“The power to design washdown and cleanup speedy and successfully in a extremely runt timeframe is a elephantine piece of the efficiencies — reducing downtime and bettering uptime and ROI and things of that nature,” says Chris Cooper, senior director, product administration at Kollmorgen.

Such washdown capabilities can play a valuable position in reducing waste in manufacturing by bettering hygiene, sturdiness, and operational effectivity — especially in sectors esteem food and beverage, prescription tablets, and packaging.

Licensed Circulate Relieve a watch on Skilled Program

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Circulate protect watch over is ubiquitous to automation. A3 affords the elementary knowledge that advantages each person working with inch protect watch over, motors and automation applied sciences. This system is designed to make certain mavens have the records they must advance their careers and profit their firms.

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The power to face as much as excessive-strain cleansing and cruel sanitizing agents helps to protect sterile situations, battling inferior-contamination or product spoilage that would otherwise 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 particular person solution is doubtless the most important solid, sturdy alternatives for excessive-strain caustic washdown, especially areas the establish aside it be most considerable to have some extra or much less sanitizing agent, now not factual excessive-strain water,” Cooper says.

The AKMA series is moreover made up of washdown-capable motors nonetheless in anodized housing, so it will tackle minimal caustics and soaps. “Ours is a correct anodized aluminum, and it is a rounded housed motor, so that you don’t fetch places for things to rest such as that you can on a square physique motor.”

The use of motors that design now not have the gorgeous extra or much less hygienic functions can motive valuable production disorders in washdown environments. This used to be the case for a Kollmorgen buyer processing and packaging sausage in Wisconsin.

“They were having many of disorders with water ingress. As that you can imagine, after they poke in and so they spray these motors down, you fetch water ingress across the shaft or you fetch water ingress across the solutions housing, and it typically corrodes the motor electronics or bearings,” Cooper says. “For sure, must you’ve a fault, the machine jams, and also you’ve quite loads of disorders with product loss. As the motor loses reference, it begins to jam, and also you both poke up a knife or poke up manufactured product or consumable product.”

The motors being mature were fighting the excessive-strain, excessive-caustic washdown of the equipment, causing the machine to jam typically. Kollmorgen replaced the competitor’s motors with its AKMH servo motors — including working straight away with the competitor’s drives to incorporate the gorgeous solutions protocol — and eradicated the topic.

Reducing Hardware Atomize

Kollmorgen moreover affords servo drives that give a snatch to plenty of Ethernet fieldbus protocols, including EtherCAT, CANopen, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, SERCOS, and SynqNet. This plays a position in reducing the need for excess inventory, minimizing the spares required.

By consolidating plenty of communication alternatives into one drive platform, producers can nick back hardware variation, integration time, engineering complexity, and downtime all over commissioning or reconfiguration.

A Holistic Viewpoint

Siemens uses synthetic intelligence (AI) and other digital applied sciences to fetch a broader see at the elephantine image of vitality and fabric financial savings. “Our approach to waste reduction and automation combines AI-powered operator assistance, steady-time monitoring, and predictive analytics to accommodate waste reduction from a holistic standpoint — the use of Copilot assistants for optimum resolution-making, digital twin simulations for course of automation, and integrated knowledge analytics to join the shop floor operations with mission programs,” says Phillip Cannon, buyer solution architect for Siemens.

Saving vitality in manufacturing, shall we embrace, isn’t as straightforward as turning machines off for the weekend the identical diagram you’d flip the lights off must you move a room. If you happen to flip that machine succor on Monday morning and restart production with out going thru an acceptable warm-up length, it is probably going you’ll per chance maybe maybe factual as neatly be creating coarse product.

“Having sensors in region so that you can detect all of this enables us to successfully nick back waste,” Cannon says. “We’re maximizing total productivity and minimizing waste.”

A Mind Is a Unpleasant Thing to Atomize

Every production facility tries to be conscious of wasting time, vitality, or materials. Nonetheless Siemens likes to discuss a fourth extra or much less waste — knowledge waste.

Cannon aspects to the legions of retiring engineers who back years of knowledge of their heads. Siemens partnered with a machine shop now not too long in the past that used to be about to lose its senior machinist — and his a protracted time of journey — to retirement.

The director of the firm used to be troubled that he’d no longer be in an enviornment to head to the machinist (Ron) and quiz him inquiries to troubleshoot programs. Ron gave about a year’s belief, so all over that time, the director position out to take dangle of as grand knowledge as he might per chance maybe maybe from him.

“He didn’t have any belief he used to be going to accomplice with us at the time, nonetheless for a year, he mild all correspondence with Ron,” Cannon says. “By the level he ended up partnering with us, we ranking forth the premise of our Industrial Copilot alternatives. He took that knowledge and ranking it in and now has a Copilot that is professional to be AI-dash. Now he feeds it inquiries to quiz it things he would assuredly quiz Ron, and he has mentioned it’s unparalleled — the style it solutions him, it be as if Ron is restful there.”

Cannon emphasizes how most considerable it is to now and again ranking the reply, “I don’t know.” It aspects to the adaptation between public AI companies and products and an industrial chatbot that has been professional on a particular pool of knowledge.

“If I factual hop on the Internet and quiz any useful resource, it’s going to inquire of the Internet and come in succor with one thing, and I even must anguish regarding the validity of that knowledge,” Cannon says. “When you’ve professional your bot to finest pull from a determined knowledge lake, that you can fetch that response of ‘I don’t know.’ And that’s crucial must you’re having a look at it from an exchange standpoint.”

For quite loads of of Siemens’ possibilities, the Industrial Copilot affords a technique to greater utter young workers who might per chance maybe maybe now not have a protracted-time employee to mentor them. They’ve been in an enviornment to use the Copilot tool to take dangle of knowledge and give guidance to more recent workers, efficiently reaching a low cost in practising time as neatly as a low cost in operator errors, Cannon says.

Automation as a Catalyst for Sustainable Transformation

As producers push in direction of a extra sustainable future, automation continues to uncover itself as a extremely efficient enabler of waste reduction. A diversity of applied sciences are now not finest optimizing performance; they’re extending equipment lifecycles, minimizing fabric loss, and conserving severe knowledge across generations.

By embracing automation with sustainability in mind, producers can nick back charges and environmental impact while moreover building extra resilient and future-ready operations. In our next installment of the Sustainable Manufacturing Sequence, we’ll stumble upon how robot refurbishment is taking part in an an increasing number of a need to have position in the round economic system — giving automation sources a 2d, and even third, lifestyles on the manufacturing facility floor.