Description
Our society and environment are changing at an unprecedented rate. Rapid industrial development and economic growth, brought on by staggering advancements in technology, are taking place at the expense of the environment. As we come to understand more about the biophysical constraints of our planet and the impacts of human activities, the growing scale of the challenge ahead is becoming clear.
In particular, the impact of manufacturing activities on the environment has become an area of great focus and concern at all levels, from public through to industry and government. A range of initiatives, investments and regulations have been put in place to mitigate the effects of manufacturing activities, however, at present these are at best just managing to slow down the rate of growth in environmental impact, as opposed to eliminating or reversing the damages caused.
In this context, a great deal of work has been conducted in recent years to better understand the future global requirements. It has been estimated that by 2050 the global population will have risen to over 9 billion [1] and that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will have increased by over 50%, driven primarily by a projected 80% rise in global energy demand [2]. When considering that we need to reduce our GHG emissions by 80% (compared to 1990 levels) in order to limit global warming to a maximum increase of 2ºC [3], this predicted rapid increase in future emissions presents serious economic and ecological concerns that require immediate attention.
Furthermore, studies have shown that if everyone in the world consumed at the rate of the average U.S. resident, we would need the resources of 4.5 Earths to sustain this [4] and the world’s proven oil reserves would be consumed in less than 10 years [3]. It has also been predicted that current reserves of copper, zinc, lead, nickel, tin, silver, and gold will be depleted by 2050 [5], and a study by Gardner-Outlaw and Engleman [6] states that by 2050 up to 4 billion people could live in areas facing water scarcity or stress.
These predictions give a clear indication that current efforts to reduce impacts are not enough and therefore a radical new approach is needed; as depicted in Figure 1. In order to identify such radical improvements, foresighting and scenario planning approaches are often used by both commercial and governmental organisations to generate strategic insights. In times of high uncertainty, these methods help to understand the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead by enabling complex future scenarios to be visualised through the combination of two key facets, i.e. facts and perceptions [7].
By considering both quantitative and qualitative factors, scenario planning methods go beyond the reach of conventional planning to give a fresh, in-depth perspective. These approaches can be used by companies to systematically identify the most influential factors affecting their industry, and to explore corresponding critical change drivers through informed long term strategic planning activities.
This paper describes one such scenario planning study undertaken with a specific focus on the manufacturing industry. The first part discusses a number of existing foresighting applications and describes the methodology used to generate the ‘SMART Manufacturing Scenarios’ (SMS). The main section provides an overview of the critical drivers which will shape future industry, and utilises a target year of 2050 to identify four feasible scenarios for future manufacturing.