Corporate Sustainability: Analysis of Siemens and Uniti Partnership

This report examines the partnership between Siemens and Uniti, focusing on their innovative approach to sustainable electric car manufacturing. It highlights how the collaboration utilizes Siemens' PLM software for virtual planning, reducing resource consumption and costs. The report details the production of the L7e electric car, emphasizing its sustainability and cost-effectiveness. The assembly line simplifies the manufacturing process, minimizes the carbon footprint, and uses lighter, tougher materials. The analysis underscores the partnership's achievement of sustainability goals by employing new technology to produce sustainable products, thereby reducing waste and protecting the environment from carbon emissions associated with traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. The partnership aims to deliver a faster, large-scale, and cost-effective sustainable electric car.

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Running head: Business for Sustainability
Student
Institution
Business for Sustainability

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Business for Sustainability
Introduction
Corporate sustainability has grown in recent times in an effort to promote practices that
reduce waste and protect the environment. Most corporates engage in various sustainable efforts
in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Klettner, Clarke & Boersma, 2014). These
strategies encompass not just economic sustainability but also social and environmental (Parnell,
2008). Corporates are challenged to develop innovative business models that encourage
voluntary activities in social and environmental sustainability in a planned manner (Schaltegger,
Lüdeke-Freund & Hansen, 2012). This not only takes care on the natural environment and
societies where businesses operate but also have a positive effect on the business. Companies
need a sustainable business case that strengthens the link between these sustainable activities and
the business success (Schaltegger, et al., 2012). This paper will discuss sustainability for
Siemens in the plan for fully automated sustainable electric car manufacturing in the article on
April 18, this year as per: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/18/uniti-siemens-plan-fully-
automated-sustainable-car-manufacturing/.
Uniti and Siemens Plan for Sustainable Car Manufacturing
There has been a recent push for sustainable sources of energy and for vehicles that do
not rely on traditional sources of energy like gasoline but a new focus on other sources like
electric, solar and others. Environmental bodies have renewed focus on technology that does not
harm the environmental and thus reduce on carbon emissions to the environment. However, not
many manufacturers of vehicles have gone green or embraced the green energy sources (Zart,
2017). Uniti and Siemens have thus partnered to build an automated and modern car production
plant using Siemen’s PLM software. The software will enable virtual planning and thus no need
for testing at the end of the production. This saves on the resources spent for the testing tasks
thus making it cheaper.
This partnership in this facility hopes to deliver an electric car, L7e which is sustainable
and not very expensive. The assembly line will simplify the process and reduce the time of
manufacturing the electric vehicle while also reducing the carbon footprint. The facility will also
use lighter but tougher materials than the conventional metals. The partnership will deliver a
sustainable electric car which is also manufactured in a sustainable manner and it will be faster,
at a large scale and requires lowers initial capital requirement.
Conclusion
The partnership between Siemens and the Swedish company Uniti will see the production
of a highly efficient electric vehicle manufactured in a sustainable way. It will reduce cost of
production while also protecting the environment from carbon emission from the traditional
gasoline driven vehicles. The partnership will have achieved the sustainability goals of using
new technology to produce sustainable products thus reducing waste while also protecting the
environment.

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Business for Sustainability
References
Klettner, A., Clarke, T. and Boersma, M. (2014). The Governance of Corporate Sustainability:
Empirical Insights into the Development, Leadership and Implementation of Responsible
Business Strategy. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(1), 145-165.
Parnell, J. (2008). Sustainable Strategic Management: Construct, Parameters, Research
Directions. International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management, 1(1), 35-45.
Schaltegger, S., Lüdeke-Freund, F. and Hansen, E. (2012). Business Cases for Sustainability: the
Role of Business Model Innovation for Corporate Sustainability. International Journal of
Innovation and Sustainable Development, 6(2), 95-119.
Zart, N. (2017). How Uniti & Siemens Plan Fully Automated Sustainable Car Manufacturing.
Retrieved September 28, 2017 from: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/18/uniti-siemens-
plan-fully-automated-sustainable-car-manufacturing/