OMRON Jointly Launches a Demonstration Experiment to Determine GHG Emissions in the Supply Chain

OMRON Corporation has conducted a demonstration experiment to visualize the carbon footprint (CFP) of its product supply chain to realize a decarbonized society, in cooperation with NTT Communications Corporation, Cognizant Japan KK, and SALTYSTER, Inc. The demonstration experiment will be introduced at the OMRON booth at IIFES 2024, held at TOKYO BIG SIGHT from January 31 to February 2, 2024.

In this demonstration experiment, OMRON’s control technologies deployed at customers' manufacturing sites and technologies of partner companies will be leveraged to create a platform that realizes "Energy Productivity Improvement," which will not only calculate CFP but also reduce energy consumption and improve productivity and quality of manufacturing to yield higher production volume. In anticipation of the growing trend in international standard-compliant inter-company data collaboration, we will be the first Japanese manufacturing company to connect to the global data distribution platform "Catena-X." The demonstration will be conducted to monitor GHG emissions in the supply chain for each product by managing production site data, including facility operating status and electricity consumption, automatically.

The global effort to achieve a sustainable society is accelerating, and countries worldwide are working to decarbonize their economies and preserve the global environment. In this context, manufacturers face the challenge of reducing GHG emissions throughout their product supply chains to meet the demands of decarbonization while maintaining quality and productivity. To achieve this, it is necessary to monitor not only GHG emissions generated by the company (Scope 1 and Scope 2) but also GHG emissions generated by other companies (Scope 3). However, no effective collection and analysis methods have yet been established, and it often takes up to one year to calculate the GHG emissions of each product, making it a significant challenge for companies to decarbonize their operations.

OMRON has worked for more than a decade to achieve both productivity and quality improvements and environmental preservation to realize sustainable manufacturing sites. Through this demonstration experiment, OMRON aims to automate data collection, standardize GHG emissions calculation methods, and improve the efficiency of on-site improvements that can be applied to various product supply chains by collaborating with partner companies that have strengths in their respective fields. The aim is to create a framework that contributes to promoting carbon neutrality in the manufacturing industry and further enhancing corporate value.