As part of the Sustainability theme day on March 19, 2026 Dr.-Ing. Steffen Blömeke of the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Engineering at TU Braunschweig presented a lecture on the growing challenges in the automotive supplier landscape with a special focus on the wiring harness industry.
The framework for decision-making in the automotive supplier landscape in general, and the wiring harness industry in particular, is becoming noticeably more complex: Legal requirements are becoming more demanding and are changing expectations regarding the handling of greenhouse gas emissions, recycling quotas, as well as documentation and transparency. At the same time, electromobility is increasingly shifting environmental hotspots from the usage phase to the production phase. Added to this are fluctuating recycled material qualities, which make material selection and process windows less robust, as well as increasing product individualization coupled with more diverse functional requirements – a development that has long presented particular challenges for wiring harnesses.
What in the past was often manageable through experience, proven design principles and local optimization, is now becoming a multidimensional decision situation: design, material, topology, manufacturing route, supplier selection and end-of-life options are more closely coupled, and trade-offs are becoming the rule rather than the exception.
This presentation addresses this challenge and explores how, under volatile conditions and across company boundaries, decisions can be made that are technically sound, economically viable, and simultaneously ecologically sustainable. A holistic life cycle engineering approach is presented as a solution framework. This approach systematically considers products and processes throughout their entire life cycle and provides methodological tools to structure complexity, consistently weigh perspectives, and establish fact-based priorities. A key focus is the role of modern, computer-aided life cycle assessment (computational life cycle assessment) as an engineering tool that not only evaluates in isolation but also specifically supports decision-making – even in the early stages of product development.
In addition, it is shown how digital factories create the necessary data basis by collecting energy, material flow and process data, and how digital twins and data spaces as infrastructure enable the standardized exchange of sustainability-relevant information along the supply chain.
In summary, the presentation shows how sustainability and economic efficiency goals can be systematically combined in the power supply industry in order to maintain and expand innovation and competitiveness despite increasing complexity.
Further information about the IWF at TU Braunschweig can be found at: www.tu-braunschweig.de/iwf
