LowCarbon Heating – Ersos
Reducing both Carbon Footprint & Should Costing simultaneously
Improved product sustainability shouldn’t come at the expense of product price
Filling the market gap before the competition
KEY POINTS
Use Case:
Low Carbon Heating
Department:
Sustainability & Cost/Supply Chain
Industry:
Domestic Heat Pumps
Challenges:
Scarce Research Data
Solution:
- Simple BoM upload with smooth product matching
- Rapid MCDA generation with flexible weightings
- Access to accurate should costing data – optimising cost breakdown
- Comprehensive LCA datasets for precise CO2 emissions
- Cloud based service for simultaneous multi-user collaboration
Results:
- 19.32% CO2 reduction
- $671/unit cost reduction
- Beyond 8x faster development speed
ERSOS, a small start-up company, was faced with the challenge of designing a unique Air Source Heat Pump to meet the demands of the social housing sector whilst assisting the UK’s sustainability goals of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, due to the limited number of employees at ERSOS and conducting research manually with limited resources, ERSOS could not guarantee the product was cost efficient whilst maximised for sustainability.
Through the use of Makersite’s globally recognised LCA datasets, employing tried-and-tested industry-standard manufacturing methods and cost data, ERSOS was able to exceed its sustainability goals without compromising product price. This was aided through automated tools built-in to the Makersite software allowing for swift and seamless results for ERSOS.
An initial BOM for the ERSOS product was uploaded to Makersite. An overall product model with sustainability, cost, and compliance information was available after an automatic matching stage for each component to a material or product group.
A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis tool (MCDA) used datasets on different injection moulded plastics and refrigerants, enabling Makersite to autocollect the data and rank them based on environment, toxicity, cost, and chemical risk. The user-friendly ranking system allowed the importance rating of each sector to match the priorities of ERSOS. The optimal choice for plastic and refrigerant in terms of sustainability could then be observed. The new data from Makersite was integrated into ERSOS’s decision matrices to evaluate whether different plastics or refrigerants should be chosen. Component changes were shown on the Makersite component Sankey diagram, where the possible Global Warming Potential (GWP) reduction was visible.
The should costing tool on Makersite was able to provide the material and manufacturing cost data through the assignment of product categories and suppliers for each component.
“Makersite’s automated data harvesting allowed for optimisation of our products sustainability and cost in a rapid manor unachievable by conventional methods. This provided the required cradle-to-gate data our company needed, allowing us to fill an emerging market gap before the competition.”
Mohammed Ali & Mathew Brown
ERSOS
Fast and accurate results to unlock deeper analysis
Beyond 8x time efficiency
By offering extensive data libraries such as Ecoinvent, rapid access of required data reducedresearch times considerably. What took ERSOS 4 full working days between a team of six, was completed in half a day by two people using Makersite.
19,32% CO₂ reduction
By making just a few material and manufacturer substitutions using the Makersite software, the results stacked up to almost a 20% CO₂ reduction. These simple changes mean ERSOS exceeded their sustainability goal and strengthened their customer relationships.
$671 per unit cost reduction
Makersite reduced ERSOS’s should costing allowing for larger profit margins and a reduced retail price -allowing ERSOS to have improved market control over their competitors.
Durham University Partnership
This case study has been written in cooperation with Durham University. ERSOS is a fictional company created for the sole purpose of serving this project. Are you interested in our current partners or a potential partnership with Makersite?
