Digital Transformation Value Indicators for a Sustainable and Circular Economy
compliance value that extends beyond the immediate operational needs of the manufacturing process and thus may need to be retained for a much longer period of time . On the other hand , unnecessarily retaining IoT beyond its compliance and useful lifecycle may represent a significant cost , legal and environmental burden .
Process , operations , quality , data scientists and other stakeholders must work together to ensure that IT / OT needs are effectively built around sound principles and process need versus taking all that which is available and then addressing what is important . This approach is not always in the forefront of thinking about data and cloud . The cloud is not without having some infrastructure , is finite ( unless additional servers are added ) and is costly to maintain .
As part of a digital transformation , consider the amount of data to be accumulated and stored on a typical packaging line per day and three shifts . Considering that a packaging line would consist of IoT sensors , vision systems and automation , an estimate would be that each packaging line collects nearly 1-2 Terabytes of data per day . Although in most cases not all data is stored or used , it would be more appropriate to estimate a total of 150-200 GB per day ( 35,000- 50,000GB / yr ./ line ).
This means that the environmental impact of each packaging line in terms of CO2 created annually is approximately 66-110 Tons of CO2 annually . In a recent publication in the Journal of Business [ 11 ], the authors note that approximately 30-40 % of all data generated is not used and is considered as “ Dark Data .” An effective digital transformation plan and design using trained neural algorithms and data sets can reduce data needs by 30-40 % in the example above , or approximately 19-44 Tons of CO2 per year .
Second , when building the digital IT infrastructure to support the IoT devices and communications for the factory floor , consideration should be given to new technologies that can combine many necessary features ( routers , firewalls , WAN devices , etc .)
Advancements are being made each day in IoT infrastructure that are superior to currently installed technologies in terms of impact and reducing carbon footprint . As part of the IT foundational assessment process of the digital transformation , consideration should be given to the obsolescence of current infrastructures , the amount of “ black box ” connections and framework that is required to connect current automation systems , local storage devices and IT systems , with new IoT and edge devices and communications infrastructure to manage and support . Employing an IT infrastructure strategy can avoid unnecessary complexity of operations and ongoing maintenance but can also support sustainability objects as fewer devices can reduce the amount of electrification needed .
Some recent examples of new technology have indicated reduced electricity consumption of 130 watts when compared to the average electricity use of a router , firewall and WAN accelerator . As an example , if a business used 3,500 networking devices to perform the functions previously
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