Five ways Quality Engineering can support your decarbonisation efforts

As the global manufacturing sector grapples with the challenge of reducing its carbon footprint, businesses are increasingly looking to technology as a critical enabler of decarbonisation. Among the many technological approaches, Quality Engineering (QE) play a pivotal role in driving energy efficiency, minimising waste, and supporting sustainable manufacturing practices.

By ensuring that software systems are optimised, reliable, and built for efficiency, Quality Engineering helps manufacturers streamline operations, reduce emissions, and meet sustainability goals. Here's how QE can support decarbonisation efforts in the manufacturing industry.

The Role of Software in Manufacturing Decarbonisation

Manufacturing processes have become more digitised and automated, with software driving everything from production planning and supply chain management to machine operation and quality control. This increased reliance on software provides an opportunity to optimise these systems for energy and resource efficiency. By ensuring that software applications are optimised and of high quality, businesses can avoid costly errors, reduce downtime, and limit their environmental impact.

1. Optimising Energy Usage in Production Systems

In manufacturing, software controls much of the machinery, robotics, and automation systems that power production lines. Inefficient or faulty software can result in energy waste through machine inefficiencies, excessive power consumption, or improper scheduling. This is where Quality Engineering can have a significant impact.

By conducting performance testing and load testing on manufacturing control systems, businesses can identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in how software directs machines. Quality Engineers can optimise the software to run more efficiently, ensuring that energy consumption is minimised without compromising output quality.

2. Reducing Waste Through Predictive Maintenance

Quality Engineering enables the use of advanced predictive maintenance systems, which can dramatically reduce waste in manufacturing. Predictive maintenance relies on real-time data and AI-driven analytics to predict when machines will require maintenance, helping businesses prevent breakdowns before they occur.

Testing and optimising these predictive algorithms ensures that they are accurate, reliable, and tailored to the specific conditions of a factory. By avoiding unexpected equipment failures and minimising downtime, manufacturers can reduce material waste, improve energy efficiency, and extend the lifespan of machinery — all of which contribute to a reduced carbon footprint.

Additionally, automated testing tools can be used to continuously monitor and improve the performance of predictive maintenance software. Ensuring that these tools are error-free and functioning optimally helps to further enhance sustainability by reducing unnecessary repair work and minimising the use of spare parts.

3. Streamlining Supply Chain Management

The carbon footprint of a manufacturing operation is not limited to the production floor; it extends across the entire supply chain. Efficient supply chain management is crucial for minimising emissions related to transportation, procurement, and logistics.

 Quality Engineering can play a significant role in making supply chains more sustainable. For example, by ensuring that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) software are running at peak efficiency. Automated testing and integration testing can be used to verify that different software systems are communicating effectively, ensuring that production schedules, inventory levels, and supplier data are accurate and up to date.

By optimising these systems, businesses can avoid overproduction, reduce shipping distances, and minimise idle time, all of which help reduce energy consumption and emissions. For example, route optimisation software can be tested to ensure that it selects the most fuel-efficient transportation routes, reducing carbon emissions associated with logistics.

4. Ensuring Compliance with Environmental Regulations

As governments around the world tighten regulations on carbon emissions and environmental impact, manufacturers need to ensure that their operations comply with these new rules. Software systems used for environmental monitoring, emissions tracking, and reporting are essential for maintaining compliance and avoiding penalties.

Through Quality Engineering, businesses can implement automated testing to verify that environmental monitoring software is accurately measuring and reporting emissions data. This ensures that data submitted to regulatory bodies is accurate and reliable. In addition, regression testing can be used to confirm that updates or changes to these systems do not introduce new bugs or inaccuracies, ensuring ongoing compliance as regulations evolve.

5. Enabling Continuous Improvement and Innovation

One of the key tenets of Quality Engineering, and one of Roq’s QE Principles is continuous improvement—a principle that aligns perfectly with decarbonisation efforts in manufacturing. As new technologies and processes emerge, QE helps ensure that software systems are updated and improved without introducing new inefficiencies or errors.

By integrating continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines into their software development practices, manufacturing businesses can ensure that software updates are tested, deployed, and monitored in real-time. This approach enables quick adaptation to new sustainability technologies, such as AI-driven energy optimisation, without risking production disruptions.

As a result, manufacturers can remain agile in their decarbonisation efforts, continuously reducing their environmental impact while maintaining efficient and reliable operations.

The Critical Role of Quality Engineering in Decarbonisation

In an increasingly digitised and automated manufacturing industry, Quality Engineering and testing are a key part of the mix to achieving decarbonisation. From optimising energy usage and reducing waste to streamlining supply chains and enhancing product design, Quality Engineering ensures that software systems support sustainable practices at every level of the business.

As manufacturers continue to embrace Industry 4.0 technologies and work towards reducing their carbon footprints, Quality Engineering will be essential for ensuring that these technologies deliver the desired environmental benefits. By integrating Quality Engineering into their sustainability strategies, manufacturers can not only meet regulatory requirements but also become leaders in the transition to a low-carbon future.

To discuss how Roq’s Quality Engineering expertise could benefit your manufacturing business, please reach out to a member of the team, or read about how Roq safeguarded one manufacturing organisation against hidden downtime costs of up to £5m per factory per day.