Advancing sustainability in industry: A conversation with Cummins
Cummins Inc.’s Mousumi Mukhopadhyay, Manager of Circular Economy & Life Cycle Leader, takes us through their journey with product level LCAs & supply chain insights
“Cummins’ goal is to grow and create a circular lifecycle plan for every part of its products: To use less, use better and use again.”
Mousumi Mukhopadhyay
Manager of Circular Economy & Life Cycle Leader
What you’ll learn
- Cummins were looking to take the next step in their sustainability journey. For them, this included keeping pace with the growth in annual ESG reporting obligations (including scaling their reporting capabilities to handle 27 ESG reports annually), standardising their data and enhancing supply chain transparency through digitisation
- Makersite helped Cummins to digitise their supply chains to show multitiered data aggregation layers, including data assurance, traceability and transparency as well as the collection and inspection of specific domains
- With Makersite’s solution, Cummins was able to show how a product was generated, trace its journey through the supply chain and translate that information into the required sustainability reports
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The company
Cummins Inc., a global power leader, is a corporation of complementary business segments that design, manufacture, distribute and service a broad portfolio of power solutions. The company’s products range from diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components including filtration, aftertreatment, turbochargers, fuel systems, controls systems, air handling systems, automated transmissions, electric power generation systems, batteries, electrified power systems, hydrogen generation and fuel cell products.
Use case: LCAs and supply chain insights
Industry: Heavy equipment, automotive
Number of employees: 73,600
Website: www.cummins.com
A conversation with Cummins inc.
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Challenges in sustainability advancement
Taking into account emerging regulations, managing stakeholder and customer demands and a need to report at increasing scale can make sustainability reporting seem like a daunting – and constantly moving – task.
However, as Cummins realised, everything starts with data. In order to achieve the granular level of visibility into their supply chains as required, it was important to first establish a data foundation framework that would allow an understanding of a product’s entire lifecycle from cradle to grave.
Mousumi Mukhopadhyay, Cummins’ Manager of Circular Economy & Life Cycle Leader, was surprised and overwhelmed by what she termed “the data intensity, the burden of data.” In an age where data underpins all our decisions, both its volume and its accuracy are crucial when it comes to achieving the desired targets. Only by working with stakeholders to ensure an “ethical orthodoxy of data collection and quality assurance” – an agreement on the best way forward – were Cummins able to embark on their sustainability transformation journey.
Nonetheless, the sheer volume of data can hinder even the best-laid plans. Cummins struggled with managing and improving their data at the rapid pace required for development. But by working with Makersite to integrate AI and evaluate LCAs across multiple ongoing workflows, they were able to achieve instant transparency and a much quicker evaluation of their data than if they had attempted the same task only with a human touch.
Multi-level criteria analysis of supply chain data
For full supply chain visibility, a strong data foundation is integral. As Mousumi notes, “integrating the data impacts all the levels of multiple workflows and ongoing projects.”
With their goal of ‘closing the loop’ and designing-out any waste elements in those projects and workflows, Cummins wanted to ensure that they were able to “grow and create a circular lifecycle plan for every part of [our] products: To use less, use better and use again.”
In order to do that, the data needs to be looked at from a number of different perspectives. “Makersite,” says Mousumi, “gives us the capability to look at it from a cost, an environmental footprint, or a design and strategy aspect.”
Investing in data management to standardise data
Any large-scale data-driven project starts with looking inwards. Mousumi identified the “standardization of data within our own boundaries” as one of the biggest game changers from Makersite. “How we collected our own data within our own workstreams and engines was our biggest ‘ah ha’ moment. Makersite helped us to do this.”
Furthermore, with sustainability data acting as the building block of any ongoing and future projects, it is essential to cross-reference that data in order to identify gaps, create better quality data and formulate a layer of aggregation. And the smarter that layer is, the more use cases you’ll have.
As Makersite’s Founder and CEO Neil D’Souza stated: “If you want to change the way you do business, you need these different pieces of information to come together in smart ways. Companies that invest into cross-referencing information and connecting different data points will realise that it results in better use cases and better data.”
From a tooling perspective, Mousumi highlighted that the clearest and most immediate outcome from working with Makersite was the ability to create process mapping through the automated collection of metadata together with multiple products and lines.
While working with the design engineers to resolve any tooling changes or transformational needs, Cummins was able to collect mass attributes from their ERP & PLM systems in a part-by-part aspect. This progressive practice enabled them to challenge themselves to find resolutions in each segment of a product, to level up and evolve, and to take those learnings into other products.
Regulatory compliance with AI: Reporting at scale
The need to report at scale is perhaps the single biggest driver for the digitisation of supply chains and multitiered data layers. Enabling data assurance, data traceability and transparency, including the collection and inspection of specific domains within the company and supply chains, is essential when it comes to dealing with today’s regulatory compliance and customer demands. As such, prioritising the modernisation of your data collection and management systems will allow you to streamline sustainability practices and help to push you closer to organisational goals and targets.
From Cummins’ perspective, and their stated 2030 goals for their Planet 2050 project, Mousumi noted that their “sustainability data creates the design of the project’s foundational blocks.” Integrating that data impacts all of their activities as they seek to achieve those aims, whether that’s reducing scope 3 absolute lifetime GHG emissions from newly sold products by 25%, reusing or responsibly recycling 100% of packaging plastics or any other goal.
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