Industrial production accounts for more than half of the world's energy consumption – a rising and disproportionate use of energy that is unsustainable and underscores the urgent need for low-carbon, environmentally friendly production. The solution lies in a comprehensive transformation of conventional production at all levels and along the entire value chain. Products, processes and systems must be optimised in line with the technological opportunities for sustainable production.
Why sustainable production?
Climate change and the accompanying social and political pressure to reduce carbon emissions, as well as skyrocketing energy prices, are creating incentives for companies to strive for more sustainable production. Companies that reduce energy consumption and waste, and reduce their carbon footprint not only fulfil their social responsibility, but also take the first steps towards a circular economy. In addition, by adopting sustainable production practices companies can ensure they comply with sustainability regulations and create long-term opportunities for increased profitability and competitive advantages.
The human factor in sustainable production
Selecting, applying, adapting or developing the appropriate structural and technological tools and applying smart manufacturing processes are only half the story. The other half is human resources: employees. Employees with the right skills play a huge part in reducing the carbon footprint and making the transition to sustainable production processes. We support you in training current and future generations of employees to meet the challenges of modern, resource-efficient production.
A bright future for green production experts: jobs in sustainable production
Industrial employees with specialised knowledge and well-rounded fundamental skills are indispensable for realising the full potential of overall sustainable production. Energy management competencies are interdisciplinary, meaning that various training profiles, such as that of the classic electronics or electrical engineer, are being enhanced to include sustainability-related skills. In addition to these broad training requirements for green issues, there is also an increasingly diverse range of specific job profiles related to energy efficiency on the labour market. These include energy engineers and energy auditors, sustainability managers, greenhouse gas report auditors and carbon capture installers, to name just a few. Well-trained energy efficiency and environmental experts have excellent career opportunities, and this trend is rising.
Promoting relevant skills for energy-efficient production
To reduce energy consumption, current and future employees must first develop an awareness of the resources that are wasted along the entire supply chain. To effectively contribute to more sustainable production and decarbonisation, they need to understand energy flows, key figures and load profiles so they can select and apply optimisation strategies for sustainable action and to identify, plan, implement and evaluate efficiency measures. The ability to quantify and monitor energy and compressed air consumption, costs and emissions of resources is therefore a must. Acquiring all these skills will enable students to identify and reduce leakages and reduce electricity consumption. This will ultimately lead to more sustainable production processes and help to achieve long-term sustainability goals.
Training solutions for developing sustainable production skills
Combining the right training solutions for vocational education and training with industry workforce development prepares future workers to take the blue path to greater efficiency. The main aim of our training solutions is always to provide you with tangible, hands-on learning experiences that bring sustainability issues to the forefront in production environments by creating awareness and recognition. That is why we develop digitisation-based use cases to improve and optimise production. These use cases range from intelligent measurement processes and industrial Ethernet-based protocols to server-based data storage, including intelligent control mechanisms for production systems and server-based or cloud-based visualisation. By applying universal principles such as continuous improvement, we ensure that knowledge can be transferred to future applications.