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The rapid evolution of the industrial landscape has transformed sustainability into one of the most significant opportunities for value creation and business growth.
While the traditional corporate playbook once relegated environmental initiatives to the ”compliance” column – viewing them as a necessary cost of doing business – global manufacturers are now recognizing that they can help drive innovation.
For Emmanuel Guilhamon, Vice President of Sustainability at Rockwell Automation, part of the issue is that, historically, sustainability ”has taken on so many different meanings that it simply doesn’t mean much to anyone anymore.”
He says that while the ”UN is right to have 17 different sustainability goals,” for businesses having so many different goals is meaningless. Instead, he suggests starting with a simple definition of sustainability as “a generation using all the resources it needs without having to borrow from future generations.”
Energy as a strategic, controllable asset
While for many executives the primary hurdle to investing in sustainability is the perception that it is passive, non-negotiable cost, Rockwell Automation’s strategy is to demonstrate that resources can be managed with the same precision as labor or raw materials.
Guilhamon identifies three main areas where improvements in sustainability can help manufacturers – energy, water consumption and recycling. In a typical industrial setting, for example, energy is often viewed as a fixed expense that arrives in the form of a monthly bill from a utility company. For Rockwell Automation, the key to shattering this perception is much greater visibility of the data.
As Guilhamon explains, once “data is measured, digitized and contextualized, it is no longer a hypothetical, conceptual notion, it is a very quantifiable data point. For example, Total energy use in kWh is informative, but kWh per unit of production is far more actionable for driving improvement.”
By providing this level of granularity, Guilhamon argues, you can see how you can control it and improve on your bottom line, effectively turning energy from an unpredictable overhead into a controllable operational asset – one that allows companies to lower their carbon footprint while simultaneously boosting their operating margins.
The Connected Enterprise and customer-centricity
Not that achieving this level of control is straightforward. A significant obstacle is the siloed nature of industrial data, especially in legacy facilities where information is trapped in disparate systems. For example, the Operations Technology (OT) on the factory floor is often completely disconnected from the Information Technology (IT) used in the executive suite, resulting in missed opportunities for efficiency.
Rockwell Automation’s Connected Enterprise digital transformation strategy brings together both OT and IT in a single, unified, and secure network. By linking people, processes, and technologies, it enables manufacturers to turn real-time operational data into actionable intelligence. Enabled by The Connected Enterprise, is the company’s Triple A Framework, a customer centric, outcome-based maturity model, which Guilhamon describes as a way of ”meeting our customers wherever they are on their sustainability and digital transformation journey.”
The framework begins with the Assess phase to identify the current state of the organization and establish a strategy and roadmap, followed by the Advance and Accelerate phases where companies first implement real-time monitoring and control solutions for higher quality of data and insights, then use AI and machine learning to drive performance and continuous optimization. Rockwell Automation connects data and operations across architecture levels, from sensors and machines to control systems and information platforms.
”Using our FactoryTalk Analytics GuardianAI solution, which is embedded on our drives, we’re also able to monitor the equipment on which it’s mounted for predictive maintenance to prevent any issues before they happen”
Emmanuel Guilhamon, VP of Sustainability, Rockwell Automation
While some of Rockwell Automation’s customers only have visibility into total plant-level energy consumption, others leverage distributed measurement across their facilities, with years of historical data enabling advanced energy performance analysis. With FactoryTalk Energy Manager, organizations can measure energy consumption at the asset level and focus on the systems most critical to their operations.
”This delivers a granular, real-time view of where and when energy is used, enabling teams to quickly identify inefficiencies, losses, and leaks.” Guilhamon explains. “It then allows you to identify consumption patterns and optimize them through our AI for energy optimization solution.” Finally, he adds ”this also supports accurate energy and emissions intensity reporting, driving both operational efficiency and sustainability outcomes.”
Another advantage of Rockwell Automation’s AI is that it can help empower the workforce by making them more efficient. For example, rather than having to leaf through maintenance manuals, engineers can use a trained AI chatbot to diagnose an issue with a piece of hardware in an instant. “Using our FactoryTalk Analytics GuardianAI solution, which is embedded on our drives, we’re also able to monitor the equipment on which it’s mounted for predictive maintenance to prevent any issues before they happen,” explains Guilhamon.
Test before you invest: from simulation to sustainability
Clearly, for Rockwell Automation’s customers, any sustainability initiative must ultimately show a return on investment. One recent example Guilhamon gives is of a large semiconductor manufacturer which sought to reduce energy consumption of a chiller plant at its fabrication site. It had 13% of costs coming from the chiller plants. “We leveraged our AI for energy optimization solution to help our customer achieve significant savings on its annual electricity bill as well as meet its ambitious multi-year sustainability goals,” says Guilhamon.
A critical component of Rockwell’s solution is the use of digital twins – 3D virtual models of machines or even entire plants. “By looking at historical data of energy consumption, we can model the energy consumptions through a facility, whether it is going through chillers, ovens or other high energy consumption machines” explains Guilhamon. “Then we can apply AI on the historic data to identify patterns so, for example, we are able to recognize when energy consumption increases but production does not.”
According to Rockwell Automation’s Guilhamon, not only are digital twins ”brilliant examples of sustainability”, but they’re also a great way ”to test before you invest”. As he explains: “Instead of having to build a facility and set up your production lines, you’re able to do that digitally, saving a lot of money and reducing a lot of waste.”
Sustainability in action: from strategy to results
Of course, energy isn’t the only area where Rockwell Automation’s solutions, including digital twins, are able to optimize consumption and make savings. “Anything we do with energy, we can apply it to water and waste – they are all variations of the same principles.”
For example, in the mining industry, one of the most resource-intensive sectors on earth, Rockwell is the integration partner for Vale’s major retrofit project at the Carajás Iron Ore Processing Plant 1 in Brazil where the goal is reducing new water consumption by up to 100%.
Rockwell’s PlantPAx Distributed Control System is helping Vale’s securely control plant operations, including waterless production processes, to optimize productivity and reduce overall operations risks. “Precise planning is critical because we have just a few days at a time to stop production, upgrade systems, and ensure the plant immediately reaches specified performance,” said José Roberto Silva Muniz, Control and Automation, Iron Ore North Projects Engineering Team, Vale, in a recent press statement.
“We preferred an industrial automation partner with technical skills who can work with us. Rockwell is supporting us for the entire project – the hardware, the software, and the management.”
In another example, Rockwell’s PlantPAx Distributed Control System is helping the UK’s Royal Mint’s new precious metals recovery facility in Llantrisant in Wales to extract gold and other metals from e-waste such as printed circuit boards in discarded mobiles and laptops.
One of the world’s fastest growing types of waste, electronic, or e-waste, is responsible for 62 million metric tons of waste generated across the world in 2022 – nearly double that of since 2010. And with e-waste predicted to exceed 80 million metric tons by 2030, improved recycling and recovery infrastructure will be needed.
“The successful collaboration with Rockwell and the deployment of its DCS solution allowed us to demonstrate the technical viability of the technology to operate at scale,” says Tony Baker, director of manufacturing innovation at The Royal Mint. “This puts us firmly on the road to our 4,000-ton per annum target.”
A third project, again in the mining industry, highlights how Resolution Copper, a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP, was able to achieve a 5% increase in system efficiency and a 10% decrease in utility costs by simply switching to Rockwell's Allen-Bradley Variable Frequency Drives.
“With VFDs, we’re able to mitigate how much electricity is being pulled in the initial upsurge cycle, which is a lot less electricity.” said Cossio, a Senior Electrical Engineer at Rio Tinto. That energy reduction equals about $1 million a year, a “substantial savings” that Resolution Copper plans to allocate toward other sustainability initiatives.
Tackling supply chain transparency and Scope 3
Finally, one of the most significant challenges facing manufacturers today is the management of Scope 3 emissions – the indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain. For a company like Rockwell, Scope 3 accounts for 99% of its total emissions profile, with 95% occurring specifically when its products are used in the field. Guilhamon admits that when faced with the sheer scale of these emissions ”our initial reaction is that it’s impossible to address the issue.”
However, rather than viewing Scope 3 as a liability, Rockwell Automation’s Guilhamon sees it as an opportunity to ”maximize our impact” on global sustainability. ”What goes into Scope 3 is mostly around making our equipment more efficient so it has less losses,” he explains.
“This is where we work in close contact with our suppliers, trying to provide the most cost-effective solutions that will be as efficient as possible.” Sustainability is embedded into the hardware itself with products being more recyclable and offering a higher efficiency rating and lower carbon footprint. This, in turn, helps customers to automatically reduce their own Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
Whereas once environmental initiatives were viewed as compliance obligations – little more than tick-box exercises – this is no longer the case. By investing in sustainability, businesses can move beyond the reactive mode of compliance and into the proactive mode of innovation.
Whether it’s eliminating water use in mining, recovering precious metals or improving energy efficiency in data centers, Rockwell Automation’s Triple A Framework provides a structure for this transformation, moving from baseline assessments to AI-driven acceleration.
Importantly for the C-Suite, sustainability initiatives needn’t cost the earth either with many providing a return on investment in just a few months. As Guilhamon concludes: “Ultimately our job as a company is to make a profit and help other companies make a profit too – and sustainability can absolutely help them do that.”
reduction target
in new water consumption target at Vale’s Carajás plant
metric tons
of global e-waste projected annually by 2030
4,000
tons per annum
precious metals recovery target at The Royal Mint facility
100%
80m+
equaling about $1 million in annual savings
in ventilation/chilling system at Resolution Copper
utility cost decrease
efficiency increase
10%
5%
Reuters Plus talks to Emmanuel Guilhamon, VP of Sustainability, Rockwell Automation, about how the company is using digital technology to help businesses take greater control of their resources
How Sustainability, AI, and The Connected Enterprise are Redefining Industrial Performance
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