Nature-Inspired Automation: Boosting Industry Evolution with Software-Defined Solutions

The natural and the built environment are often thought of as wholly separate. The built environment is an attempt to make it more comfortable for people, but we live on this planet just like any other species—plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. And given that humans are some of the youngest organisms to call Earth home, there is a lot we can learn from the other species. Especially when it comes to sustainability—from the hibernation of animals to conserve energy to the agile manufacturing of birds’ nests, and even the contributions of fungi and bacteria to the circular decomposition cycle.

Today, only 13% of global waste is recycled, a far cry from the circularity demonstrated by nature. By looking at how nature preserves, recovers and reuses critical resources, industry can take inspiration to make the built environment more sustainable. In fact, improving supply chain circularity could cut CO2 emissions by more than 39%, according to the Circularity Gap Report.

The good news: Technology is available today that can yield better, faster and more resilient products that are also more sustainable. Digital twins provide the ability to generate, evaluate and optimize with speed and AI can be leveraged to obtain insights for data like never before. As a result, we can innovate without borders to bring better ideas to life faster and in a more cost-effective way, all while reducing our environmental footprint.

Entrepreneurs, designers and engineers are using these tools today. As sustainable Digital Enterprises, businesses like HERU, Blendhub and the Siemens factory in Erlangen are accelerating their digital transformation with product and production design, simulation and engineering tools to lower their carbon footprint whilst staying competitive.

Material Efficiency: Using a Process of Thermal Decomposition of Materials

Establishing circular supply chains is a goal for many industries and it has been practiced for millennia in nature. Most notably this can be seen in the construction of shelters by using materials from older structures and repurposing existing foundations.

While this is achievable in many sectors, some materials need to be downcycled into more basic constituents. The decomposition cycle is a fantastic example of this need. Most organic materials cannot last indefinitely and, at some point, need to be broken down to make way for new growth.

In our environment, there are a few types of products that cannot be reused or recycled due to the material properties or their application. HERU has developed an appliance that mirrors the inputs and outputs of the decomposition process to handle these materials more effectively.

Packaging, plastics or sanitary items, for example, cannot be reused the same way stone can be in a building. HERU takes these items destined for the landfill and instead uses pyrolysis, a process of thermal decomposition of materials in the absence of oxygen. They imitate this natural process in five hours instead of 5-9 million years.

Simultaneously, the energy released during pyrolysis is captured to be used within the facility for heating—much like district heating as a useful byproduct of other industrial processes. But this system also generates up to twice as much energy than is required to operate it, meaning it can lower energy bills, CO2 emissions and waste obligations all at the same time. Siemens technology optimizes the product and helps the company scale.

Agile and Local: Micro Factories Use Available Resources First

Counter to the decomposition of waste is the growth and production of resources. Much like the natural world, the built environment can change, so it requires agility to remain effective and profitable. Some species will undergo metamorphosis to adapt to expected changes to their environment and others alter behavior to achieve similar goals.

An example of the latter is nesting birds. Given their migration patterns, many avian species rebuild their nests in a very short timespan every year for mating season. And they do so quickly, with local materials. This accelerates the migration of bird species because they are not burdened by the increased weight of nesting materials.

Like birds that rely on local materials to make migration easier, Blendhub is relying on micro factories and local ingredients to provide healthy and affordable products.

Blendhub has implemented a similar idea for food production. Rather than rely on the globalized food system that has been constructed over the past few decades, the company is localizing food for the regions they are serving. By relying on local ingredients and creating modularized factory designs, Blendhub can provide healthy, affordable and local products much faster than the globalized system. Through understanding the needs and available resources first, the company can deploy a micro factory with the exact equipment a community needs—reducing cost, complexity and setup time.

Using digital twin technology and software-defined automation, Blendhub is delivering plug-and-play factories at scale in fewer than six months; this process could otherwise take years. By understanding the needs of the community, the company can also implement better recipe management to balance the available produce and the dietary requirements of the area. For a location in a small Indian village, for instance, Blendhub was able to increase the vitamin D content in recipes to offset deficiencies observed in the population.

Building Success from Communication

While the trees, flowers and fungi in a forest are most seen and understood, there is also a vast network of roots, bacterium and mycelia working together. These mycorrhizal networks can help organisms share excess resources, create symbiotic relationships of wastes and nutrients, and possibly even communicate risks. These unseen processes of life can be extremely important to the overall health of the environment.

A manufacturing facility can function much the same way. The physical machines are the most visible, but the software and electronics running these systems have an impact on operations, as well. For example, Siemens’ electronics factory in Erlangen, Germany leverages the same principals of mycorrhizal networks—sharing data collected between machines to optimize the overall operation of the factory. This not only helped the factory achieve its goal of more effective, efficient and profitable manufacturing, but making these connections has established it as a sustainable Digital Enterprise.

Leveraging the same principles as mycorrhizal networks, the Siemens electronics factory in Erlangen shares data between machines to optimize operations and is on the path for carbon neutral operation by 2030.

By sensing what is happening in the systems and understanding what every process requires, the Siemens factory was able to meet its sustainability KPIs and put the factory on the path for carbon neutral operation by 2030. Since 2021, carbon emissions have been cut by 50% and energy consumption has dropped 25% while increasing production capacity utilization thanks to efficiency projects and adjustments characterized from becoming a sustainable Digital Enterprise. For this effort, the factory was recently recognized as a Digital Lighthouse Factory by the World Economic Forum.

Lessons From Nature

Nature mastered the art of sustainability through circular processes and preservation long before our built environment was constructed. By modeling the environment’s instinctual resourcefulness and combining it with state-of-the-art digitalization and automation technologies, companies like HERU, Blendbub and Siemens act as sustainable Digital Enterprises.

With tools like simulation and data analysis to achieve closed-loop optimization, companies can bring better innovations to life faster while optimizing carbon intensity, resource utilization and other critical factors throughout their value chain.

Editor’s Note: Machine Design’s WISE (Workers in Science and Engineering) hub compiles our coverage of workplace issues affecting the engineering field, in addition to contributions from equity seeking groups and subject matter experts within various subdisciplines.