Sustainability Analysis Tool Aids Data-Driven Decision-Making

Machine shops and other types of manufacturing facilities are increasingly asked or expected to set sustainability goals or to consider environmental impact in their process and materials decisions.

How can a shop factor sustainability into its operations, while also prioritizing cost-effectiveness and performance?

The starting point is data.

Patrik Eurenius, head of sustainability and EHS at Sandvik Coromant, explains, “Companies are committing to becoming ‘net-zero,’ but where to start? The first layer of the pyramid, so to speak, is reducing energy consumption, and the first step toward reducing energy consumption is to make sure that manufacturing operations are running as efficiently as possible with as little waste as possible. And to do that, we need to be able to make clear, tangible, data-driven decisions.”

A variety of tools and solutions for gathering and analyzing sustainability-related metrics are being developed across manufacturing sectors, many of them process- or material-specific. In high-volume machining, one solution is a relatively new service provided by metalcutting tools and manufacturing solutions provider Sandvik Coromant for its customers. Called the Sustainability Analyzer, this service is essentially an upgraded version of the company’s existing Productivity Analyzer tool, and is said to enable machining customers the ability to capture, measure and analyze data on energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.

Eurenius says, “The tool was initiated a few years ago as our conversations with customers began to focus more on challenges they were facing with needing to show their efforts toward net-zero [emissions], or towards transparency in the supply chain, or in circularity — either from internal goals and conversations at their companies or in reaction to their customers. We realized at Sandvik that we were in a position with our Productivity Analyzer already that we could expand that service and adapt it to help our customers quantify energy savings and also emissions.”

Analyzing Sustainability Data: Energy & Emissions

The Sustainability Analyzer, provided as a consulting service option for current or prospective customers of Sandvik Coromant cutting tools and other CNC machining solutions, is said to provide detailed reporting on energy consumption per component, annual energy usage and annual CO₂ emissions. This is in addition to the Productivity Analyzer tool, which uses data such as productivity for a tested operation, and costs related to tools, machine, toolroom, scrap and rework, and reports recommended process changes or new products to increase productivity and reduce costs.

The first step is data collection. The shop provides data on whichever specific component is being analyzed — such as the workpiece material, the electricity consumption of the machine used, and relevant tool and machining process data for the tested operation. Carbon emissions data related to energy consumption can either be provided by the customer, if they produce their own electricity, or via the public Electricity Maps website which tracks emissions data for electricity used by locality. The Analyzer tool also leverages data from the company’s CoroPlus Tool Guide to calculate metrics on other recommended products, if relevant.

“Through our Productivity Analyzer, we’ve been helping our customers to analyze and optimize their productivity for more than 20 years,” explains Istvan Tomoga, global tech support team manager at Sandvik Coromant. “Our tool compares different processes and products to help show our customers how to make decisions that increase productivity of machines or use less energy. Today, there’s more and more interest in sustainability and reducing CO₂ emissions. We realized we could use some of the data we already have and expand this service to translate those energy savings and other metrics into CO₂ emissions savings.”

The Analyzer outputs a multi-page document detailing productivity, cost and sustainability-based metrics, for both the current process and equipment alongside new, recommended tools or machines by the Sandvik Coromant team.

What can a shop then do with this information?

“A customer then has information they need to make fact-based decisions,” Tomoga says. For example, a shop might be looking into acquiring a new machine or upgrading a current machine to increase throughput and cycle times, and to alleviate production bottlenecks. “We can provide information on solutions that combine, ideally, more productivity, cost savings and sustainability,” he notes, adding, “In many cases, too, you can actually increase capacity of an old machine without having to invest in a new one, through applying a new technique, changing the CNC programming or changing the metal used in the component. That’s why it’s a consultative discussion.”

Launch and Early Feedback

The Sustainability Analyzer launched officially in March 2024, but Sandvik Coromant began introducing the tool to select customers in early 2023.

“We got a lot of positive feedback from customers in mass production telling us it’s easy to show a nice savings, because obviously, when it comes to one component, it can be a few grams of CO₂ reduced, but when a customer is producing thousands of the same component then we can easily increase to save the CO₂  amount to tons during the year, which is really a nice volume,” Tomoga says.

An early automotive manufacturing customer used the Sustainability Analyzer tool data to evaluate options for its gearbox manufacturing line. “We were able to use both our Productivity Analyzer and Sustainability Analyzer to compare different cutting tools,” Tomoga explains. The customer was able to identify an option that increased productivity in the machine by 15% while also reducing energy consumption per machined component by 23%. “It wasn’t only the cutting tool change, either – we also helped them improve the cutting method to increase productivity to an even higher level,” he adds.

For Sandvik Coromant customers, these services can also be paired with the company’s broader Manufacturing Wellness initiatives, which includes its buyback program for collecting cutting tools at their end of life and re-manufacturing them into new tools.

“We are becoming more and more data-driven when it comes to sustainability,” Eurenius says. “Of course, this is good for Sandvik and for comparing our products, but it’s also good for the industry. With today’s tools, you can easily analyze a process, break it down to the energy consumed and the materials and the cutting tools used and see what your cost is per part, see what your energy consumption is per part and make the best decisions for your company and customers.”