The Challenge
A leading international aerospace manufacturer, known for its expertise in aerospace engineering and manufacturing, approached Unipart to support them with reducing their environmental impact and ensuring their regulatory compliance. The manufacturer, and the aerospace industry as a whole, faces increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint. To achieve this, companies need to comply with upcoming environmental regulations.
The company produces finished components with advanced materials and manufacturing techniques, and needed to ensure the components met the aerospace industry’s rigorous demands. Alongside this, they aimed to reduce their overall environmental impact by identifying and mitigating climate-related risks through sustainable manufacturing processes.
To achieve this, they needed to efficiently gather and analyse emissions data across their supply chains. This data is crucial for pinpointing improvement areas and reducing operating costs. However, many companies lack the tools and resources to effectively measure and report their emissions, especially by product.
The Solution
Unipart Consultancy developed a “Cradle-to-Gate” Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the aerospace manufacturer.
Leveraging Riskoa’s AI-enabled LCA software, this LCA empowers companies to identify their products’ environmental impact and allow the business to understand its current impact, provide an ability to share this information with key stakeholders, and plan for reduction and further mitigation activities to improve the product profile.
The tri-technology approach delivers accurate and rapid results, enabling efficient data access and analysis. The solution also automates much of the emissions reporting process, freeing up valuable time for enhanced decision-making.
The Impact
Unipart worked to help the client understand the environmental impact of each stage of their component production process, with a focus on the embodied greenhouse gas emissions related to global warming.
The recommended mitigation strategies included a virtual Kanban to ensure only products that are needed are made and shipped, as well as longer-term product insight to enable sustainable manufacturing through material and supply changes.
By implementing these recommendations, the benefits to be realised include:
- £2-3 million inventory reduction per supplier
- £20-50k p.a. of savings in energy consumption
- Up to 30% of Operational Excellence improvements
- Reduced environmental impact
- Improved production capacity, efficiency, and use of space
Are you confident you understand the full environmental impact of your products?
Gain valuable insights how your business can reduce its environmental footprint by reading our blog on Life Cycle Assessments.