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Hanover, Germany – Among the main factors limiting the drive to sustainability in the tire manufacturing industry are complexity, changing legal regulations, lack of input from suppliers along the supply-chain, according to Peter Haan, leader of Siemens tire vertical.

Moreover, there is often no data input available due to missing or incompatible interfaces, limiting transparency about a company’s own energy and resource consumption, said in a conference presentation at the recent Tire Tech Expo in Hanover.

Among other downsides, explained Haan, these limitations “leave companies paying too much in CO taxes and to them losing competitive advantages in front of your customers.”

And faced with such issues, many companies are just fulfilling the minimum regulatory requirements: staying with static average assumptions for product carbon footprint (PCF).

Indeed, for up to 90% of supply-chain emissions most of the CO2 calculation is based on static database averages so that supplier and sub-supplier emissions-reductions are disconnected from the manufacturer’s PCF.

To provide a PCF for your products to customers, said Haan, “you have to know the protocol for producing electricity or other energy, the cooling media, nitrogen, as well as all the other goods you buy, for example, carbon black and natural rubber.

“All of these materials have a history, they're not coming just for free without protocols into your plant. All this has to be taken into account.”

According to the presenter, Siemens has responded to these challenges with the introduction of a management tool designed to enable dynamic PCF management across tire manufacturing operations.

Called SiGreen, the system is designed to enable the industry to manage its PCF more effectively via a communication & reporting system that allows for frequent and pro-active updates of PCF data – including quantifying improvements by suppliers.

The net result, commented Haan, is tire makers gain access to dynamic PCF calculations that support effective target-setting and efficient emissions-reduction measures with quantifiable results.

This, he said, provides “specific, dynamic and trustworthy PCF as a basis for data-driven decisions that accelerate decarbonisation in their own operations as well as their supply chains.”

Going forward, Siemens aims to “continuously enhance SiGreen to a solution to address further ESG criteria, supporting product passports and a circular economy in the future,” said Haan.