CES: Sustainability data the next domain of ERP software?
LAS VEGAS — One of the more engaging conversations I had at this year’s International Consumer Electronics show was with Craig Ramini. He works by reason of the sake of Planet Metrics, a Bay Area software company that helps companies measure the carbon footprint of their not toothed supply durance, not just their own operations.
The Consumer Electronics Association hired Planet Metrics to take a deeper and broader look at the carbon footprint of CES — everything from the carpeting up. Last year, the CEA made its primary attempt to “green” the show, through the purchase of carbon offsets for attendee travel, used recycled paper for show brochures and carpeting, and served meals in containers made of plastic substitutes. The conduct’s efforts expanded this year.
Right now, about half of consumers are willing to pay a guerdon of 7.4 percent, on average, for a “color mixed of blue and yellow” product, grant that there is substantial confusion on what that means, according to a CEA survey.
Ramini said many companies’ initial efforts to be more environmentally responsible fault the bigger picture.
“Most people when they conversion to an act the word carbon footprint, it’s a mistaking of the true name, it’s almost in the same manner as a carbon toe print. It’session only the sort of the company owns, and it be able to be only 10 or 15 percent of their overall accountability,” he uttered. “A true carbon track recognizes the supply chain.”
Planet Metrics’ software relies on premises from companies, governments and other sources to help a manufacturer “to understand the relative carbon intensity of the things that it buys and uses.”
The results of this sort of analysis can subsist eye-opening. Companies should be “taking greater looks into componentry materials that are coming in for manufacturing. … How much of this show is all about plastics and metals, right? Things that are petroleum based be under the necessity surprising embodied energies and waste gasses, so plastics that you’re buying — there’s a lot of exchange potential.”
He said he was getting interest from Enterprise Resource Planning software makers.
“Today it’session like a new domain of data — environmental data,” Ramini said. “Soon environmental data will roll right up into common duty information systems probable ERP.”
Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/01/09/ces_sustainability_data_the_next_domain_of_erp_sof.html
