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Mathias_
Associate
Associate
Döhler, a family-owned company founded in 1838 and today a global manufacturer, marketer and provider of technology-based natural ingredients, ingredient systems and integrated solutions for the food and beverage industry, has committed itself to a sustainable business approach. Climate change is one of the most important topics in the 21th century and immediate action needs to be taken. Therefore, Döhler is working hard on the reduction of its product carbon footprint.







“We are committed to acting long-term and with responsibility in mind. Our focus and our actions respect the principles of sustainability” says Pierre Wiese, Head of Business Solutions Commercial at Döhler.


  • Improving eco-efficiency along the value chain,

  • consuming less energy and water,

  • producing less CO2


are just a few of the points to which Döhler has committed itself. Nevertheless, companies are facing complex operating and supply chain structures which means information on the CO2 footprint is often barely available and hardly traceable to the end-to-end business process.

“An innovative solution to trace back carbon emissions to its roots is necessary and one reason why we collaborated with SAP”, Pierre continues. As a long-standing SAP customer and valued partner, Döhler and SAP decided to run a co-innovation engagement to carry out a Climate 21 pilot.

In May 2020, Döhler became the first customer to go live with a pilot installation of SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics for one of their products. They are now able to trace carbon emissions with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud.


 

SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics


SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics could be explained in the following way:
The four contributors for the product carbon footprint are:




  1. 1. Purchased goods

  2. 2. Energy (consumed for production processes)

  3. 3. Direct emissions

  4. 4. Outbound transport


The user maintains emission factors for these and together with quantity data, bill of material and routing data from the SAP S/4HANA Cloud or on premise system, the calculation of the product carbon footprint is done within SAP Analytics Cloud. This allows insights by product, plant or cost center (e.g. to compare or analyze within a certain business unit or division), which are the basis for further actions. For example, it might become visible that a certain production step (activity type) or purchased raw material causes a lot of carbon emissions. One possible measure could be to buy raw materials with a lower carbon footprint, replace energy-inefficient machines with more modern ones, or purchase green energy instead of the conventional electricity mix.



The SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics must be seen in the bigger context of the Climate 21 initiative to cover the full value chain of customers. SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics focuses on analytics and insights in the first step. These capabilities are ideal to get familiar with, gain first eye-opening insights and take first meaningful actions.







“With such a significant innovation, we rely on the expertise and close cooperation with our customers. Together with them and our product management we define business capabilities and integrate them into the product roadmap for our analytical and transactional applications. To run this pilot Döhler was a great experience for us. Their feedback will directly influence the development of further products in the Climate 21 context”, describes Sabine Otholt, Head of Strategic Customer Engagements & Co-Innovation at SAP.

What should customers take into consideration:


Starting a carbon impact analysis of production processes is new for many customers and requires intensive collaboration between departments which normally act independently from each other – for example production data specialists on shop floor level will collaborate with process experts from business side. This will be necessary to maintain the right emission factors for different production steps. The same applies in a similar way for purchased goods or raw materials, direct emissions and outbound transport.

Such changes require rethinking and new ways of cross team and organizational collaboration. In return customers are rewarded with the ability to:

  • get an overview on overall emissions and insights that contribute most and check where it makes sense to start reducing

  • start to act reducing the carbon emissions your company is responsible for

  • build the basis for further (sustainable) reporting

  • give information to your customers on the carbon footprint on those products that they buy from you









To minimize our carbon footprint, we need to understand the impact of our production and logistics along our entire value chain. SAP will help us to improve our operations and transform our product portfolio describes Peter Spaargaren, Head of Group Sustainability at Döhler the benefit of the collaboration.

This co-innovation paves the way for a future in which products are equipped with a CO2 label and can therefore influence the purchase decision in the B2B and B2C business.
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