Guideline for Identifying Required Data Granularity for Deriving Improvements to the Environmental Impact of Production

Abstract

AbstractVarious sustainability reporting tools (SRTs) already exist, such as ISO 14001, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP). However, these tools focus on calculating total environmental impact for reporting to external parties, rather than providing guidance to a company on obtaining measures needed to identify improvement potentials within its production. This is due to low granularity of data measurements dictated by the SRTs, since insights only available from higher granular data are typically needed to derive actionable improvements. Understandably, differentiating for which processes higher granularity is needed is not always straightforward. Thus, this paper presents a guideline concept to support manufacturers in determining the required data and data granularity to identify improvement potential, while also assessing the ecological impact of their production. Firstly, energy consumption (electricity and heat), water and material use are determined to be the most relevant measures. Secondly, a structured categorization of production steps is created. As a starting point, selected metal working processes according to DIN 8580 are incorporated into the guideline. Thirdly, the data/device hierarchy from the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) is used to define three data granularity levels. Finally, a structured approach for determining ideal data granularity for each production step is developed and applied to build an initial version of the guideline. An evaluation shows that the guideline recommends appropriate data granularities, promising to be a useful tool for manufacturers wanting to improve their ecological impact.