New Study Shows Implementing Product Lifecycle Intelligence in Sustainable Product Design and Sourcing Expected to Lift Win Rate & Time to Market by 25% for Mature Manufacturers

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Apr 08, 2024, 07:00 ET

STUTTGART, Germany, April 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Makersite, a software company pioneering a new approach to sustainable product design and sourcing, today released research conducted by Forrester Consulting, titled "Transform Product Sustainability into Performance Initiatives with Product Lifecycle Intelligence," that reveals over half of organizations' sustainability efforts are driven by regulations despite the benefits from adopting more sustainable product lifecycle intelligence (PLI).

Currently, manufacturers struggle to translate compliance initiatives into making informed decisions during the product design phase due to outdated data systems and data silos. The study, commissioned by Makersite, shows that by implementing PLI to integrate data held within their systems, product engineers in the design phase can create products that are more sustainable (30%), have faster time-to-market (28%), and reap higher profits (26%).

The 2024 study, which included insights from 493 respondents with product design and sourcing decision-makers in manufacturing, also pointed to several operational improvements including the ability to support product lifecycle decisions with better data quality (29%), improved visibility of materials and component supply chains (28%), and more efficient sustainability reporting (28%).

Despite the benefits, however, respondents reported experiencing challenges while securing executive support for incorporating sustainability in PLI (53%), measuring and quantifying the environmental impact of their products (51%), and obtaining budget to gather material, component, and supplier intelligence integral to optimizing their product's quality, cost, and sustainability (50%). These difficulties are a manifestation of poor maintenance of availability, cost, sustainability, and performance data in manufacturers' material and component libraries – an issue for 49% of decision-makers.

Additional findings from the study include:

Mature manufactures expect a 25% uplift across key metrics by implementing PLI: This includes positive impacts to win rate, time to market, price premium, employee attrition, and cost of capital. Meanwhile, novices expect key metrics to rise a minimum of 15%.
Despite this, product design and sourcing sustainability metrics are manually and inconsistently tracked: Over two in five of those surveyed confess to haphazard or nonexistent monitoring of critical sustainability metrics such as waste generation (43%), scope 1 and 2 (42%), scope 3 (41%) greenhouse gas emissions, and recycled or reused materials or components (40%) was either manual, ad hoc, or non-existent. Further, less than 35% of manufacturers have fully automated routine reporting for any specific metric.
Advanced analytics to navigate product development remains underutilized by manufacturers: 87% of leaders assert their organizations assess and incorporate regulatory changes into their business models, but a mere 30% of manufacturers leverage reporting data in predictive modeling and forecasting to meet standards or regulations.
Over a third of manufacturers' core focus is strengthening regulatory compliance: Most Europe-based leaders rated this as their top priority, compared to it being the 5^th highest in the U.S.
Data quality is key to efficient product design and sourcing: 42% rate enhancing the data quality of their environmental impact assessments the most helpful in a shift to efficient and effective product design and sourcing, followed by harmonizing product and supply chain data to improve collaboration among stakeholders (40%).

"We are amidst an unprecedented revolution that is changing not just the products we make, but how we make them. Companies that are set up for rapid change are becoming the new leaders of tomorrow and we're already witnessing this evolution amongst our customers including Cummins, Vestas and Microsoft, among others," said Neil D'Souza CEO and Founder of Makersite. "Unfortunately, companies have only a piece of the data needed to make decisions quickly – the internal view. Most of the data needed, comes from the world outside – supply chains, costs, regulations, impacts and others – this is the external view. The ability to combine the two instantaneously to drive better decisions and tradeoffs will avoid costly mistakes, shorten time-to-market and create more sustainable and successful products."

For more insight into the impact of product lifecycle intelligence, download the full commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Makersite: "Transform Product Sustainability into Performance Initiatives with Product Lifecycle Intelligence."

Methodology

In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 493 product design and sourcing decision-makers at manufacturing organizations across North American and Europe to evaluate how they are incorporating sustainability in product lifecycle management. Survey participants included decision-makers in product, procurement, and sustainability management, supply chain management, and procurement. Questions provided to the participants asked the current state and challenges they face in product lifecycle management, a self-assessment of their product lifecycle management and sustainability practices, and solutions that can address their pain points. Respondents were offered a small incentive as a thank you for time spent on the survey. The study began in December 2023 and was completed in January 2024.

About Makersite GmbH

Makersite is a pioneering Product Lifecycle Intelligence platform that helps product teams to manage product sustainability, supply chain risk, cost, and compliance in real-time, all in one place. We combine manufacturers' product and supply chain data, held within multiple systems, with our own data foundation made up of 140 material, process and supplier databases to create a digital twin of their products and their supply chain, allowing teams to collaborate more effectively so that they can design, source and manufacture better products up to 50x faster than traditional methods. With a global workforce and a customer base including Microsoft, Schaeffler, Cummins and Vestas, Makersite's goal is simple: Make better products, faster. To learn more about how we transform the process of deciding what to make, which suppliers to buy from and which material to use from months to minutes, watch our demo here or visit makersite.io. Source smarter, design greener, collaborate faster.

SOURCE Makersite