As pressure mounts to decarbonise the industrial supply chain, the factory floor has prime potential to cut the carbon footprint. The key is to understand how this can be achieved. Mandeep Sidhu, Industrial Digital Transformation Consultant, SE Advisory Services, Schneider Electric, explains.

A report from MIT Technology Review[1] on Equipment Management and Sustainability backs this approach up, in the form of a roadmap that can be followed by manufacturing businesses in the UK. The roadmap offers five key takeaways to progress towards the UK’s target of achieving Net Zero by 2050. These takeaways are: asset modernisation, AI powered insights from contextualised data, sustainability by design, asset and energy efficiency and the factory floor acting as an important ‘command-and-control’ point for a larger decarbonisation journey.

The sector has already made excellent progress this year toward the Net Zero by 2050 goal, with the 2024 figures released earlier in the year reporting a 9% drop in emissions[2]. This was largely achieved due to blast furnace closures in the iron and steel industry and lower coal use across industry as a whole. However, there were also many small contributors, highlighting how any small energy savings can add up.

Digital transformation for efficiency and sustainability

Digital transformation drives sustainable supply chains by improving efficiency, resilience and transparency. By using a dedicated service partner to advise on digitalisation, companies can cut waste, lower emissions and meet compliance goals.

Operational efficiency and production optimisation reduce resource use and carbon impact through automation and analytics. Asset performance and data contextualisation enable predictive maintenance, extending equipment life and supporting circular practices. Digital quality systems ensure compliance with environmental and social standards, while energy management tools help implement decarbonisation strategies.

A secure data infrastructure enables transparent reporting and accurate tracking of emissions. Governance and change management embed sustainability into decision-making, ensuring long-term cultural alignment.

Together, these pillars help organisations decouple growth from emissions and provide a framework for the following programmes.

Using a service partner to overcome challenges

Modernisation of legacy assets is a significant step manufacturers can take to cut their carbon footprint. This will reduce the amount of energy and raw materials used in production, and it can cut CO2 emissions drastically as a result.

However, planning and delivering modernisation requires expert knowledge and time – and factory managers don’t always have this luxury. A service partner can support modernisation in three ways, which a factory manager can use individually or in combination.

The first is site auditing, which evaluates and maps electrical and automation systems. This creates a baseline view of current assets that can form the basis of a plan. The key is to use a partner with expert knowledge of automation and power systems, as well as experience in factory upgrades.

The second type of service aims to maximise the lifecycle of assets by modernising or upgrading individual machines. During this, the service experts will develop a plan to incorporate digitalisation. In addition, they can minimise waste and disruption by replacing only time-served equipment, while retaining assets such as cabling and cabinet that remain in good condition.

Third is an ongoing services membership such as Schneider Electric’s EcoCare, which puts the monitoring and maintenance of the newly improved operations into the hands of specially trained experts who are available 24/7.

Sustainability-as-a-service removes the guess work and ensure that all investment on the factory floor contributes meaningfully to sustainability of the entire supply chain.

By using bespoke service memberships manufacturers in legacy or new facilities can quickly enable condition-based maintenance initiatives, unlocking real-time factory floor insight, which allows much greater accuracy for both maintenance and modernisation schedules. Industrial services ensure that the skills and expertise needed to measure performance and implement schedules that will support the journey of the manufacturer.

Sustainability on the factory floor

Other actions that manufacturers can take to decarbonise are around energy. For example, they can source low-carbon energy or invest in their own renewable energy microgrid.

They can also focus on resources. For example, by improving the energy consumption of machinery and equipment such as electric motors. Alternatively, they can reduce the number of processes or change processing steps to cut energy consumption or use of raw materials. 

One example is the US steel company Castrip, which cut the carbon footprint of steel strip production by 80 – 85% by combining multiple energy-intensive production steps.

Command-and-control

As the sector takes action on the ‘quick wins’ of fuels and electricity under Scope 1 and 2 emissions, it has become clear that Scope 3 is often a major source of emissions. Scope 3 emissions include the energy embedded in raw materials that are sourced for production. It includes the energy used to make the steel, plastics and chemicals delivered to the factory gates.

Cutting the carbon footprint of these materials requires a ‘command and control’ approach to the supply chain. OEMs that want to drive down Scope 3 emissions are demanding that their suppliers take action in cutting two ways.

The first is cutting their own emissions, often by addressing energy consumption at their production sites, and sourcing and recycling waste material, which typically uses less energy than sourcing virgin materials. The second way is by having their environmental footprint data certified. The OEM buying the materials will benefit by having greater certainty over this data, which feeds into its own sustainability reporting. For example, the 1,000 top suppliers engaged in Schneider Electric’s Zero Carbon Project[3] have made notable progress in adopting energy efficiency initiatives and shifting to renewable energy. This was achieved through technical training sessions and workshops to help measure emissions and implement reduction strategies leading to an overall reduction in supplier emissions and surpassing our 50% 2025 target ahead of schedule. 

The most crucial factor of the sustainability of the supply chain journey is to not see the factory floor as isolated.

Accelerating decarbonisation 

Make UK’s Digitalise to Decarbonise[4] report shows that consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable products and this is placing pressure on OEMs. From the other side of the supply chain, the UK Government has set the target of a 66% reduction in industrial emissions compared to 2018 levels. So, with manufacturers facing pressure from all directions to decarbonise, sustainability is shifting from being a customer benefit to a business-critical need for any manufacturer looking to remain competitive.  

Expertise boosts sustainability

The good news for manufacturers is there has never been a better time to pursue sustainability as next-generation service models remove the complexities around decarbonisation. Solutions such as Schneider Electric’s SE Advisory Services – Industrial Digital Transformation Consulting, EcoConsult, EcoFit and EcoCare – are redefining maintenance strategies for the sustainable future by helping manufacturers overcome the three major challenges of setting a baseline, planning upgrades and ensuring proactive access to expertise. Manufacturers eager to trade on their green credentials should explore a service partnership that gathers the best from people, equipment, and digital capabilities to proactively monitor, support, maintain, fix, and advise factory floor operations 24/7.

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[1] technologyreview.com/2022/05/23/1052590/equipment-management-and-sustainability/

[2] reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/britains-greenhouse-gas-emissions-fell-4-2024-government-data-shows-2025-03-27/

[3] se.com/ww/en/about-us/sustainability/zero-carbon-project/

[4] makeuk.org/insights/reports/2023/07/11/digitalise-to-decarbonise-report