There can be little doubt that manufacturers are taking sustainability seriously. Although 31% say sustainability initiatives at their companies are still directed at the division or department level, 66% say sustainability is “very important” today, and 66% expect sustainability to be more important to their companies next year than it is today, according to a recent poll of Managing Automation readers.
Still, it is unclear just how much or how rapidly manufacturers will invest in new software and plant floor technologies intended to help them quantify, monitor, model, and improve the environmental impacts of their operations and products. According to a recent study by sustainability consulting firm Pure Strategies and energy efficiency technology provider Groom Energy Solutions, although 3,000 organizations worldwide have calculated their carbon emissions, only about 300 have purchased enterprise carbon accounting software to do so.
The study predicts that the number will quadruple over the next two years. Similarly, a recent Aberdeen Group study says 87% of manufacturers plan at some point to invest in software to support their sustainability efforts. And reader poll shows that 56% say technology will play a reasonably important or very important role in supporting their sustainability initiatives.
But some, including some technology vendors, are doubtful that spending on new software tools for tracking and analyzing such things as carbon emissions and energy use will take off overnight.