Digitalization

Today, digital technologies are evolving at a faster pace than ever, becoming increasingly complex and affecting more and more people. As new digital technologies dramatically reshape industries, Lenzing pursues efforts to leverage their benefits to optimize its operations, enable transparency and traceability along the value chain and to provide additional value to its customers.

Digital solutions leading to a new way of work

Remote working is particularly likely to appeal to a younger generation of employees because it allows a better balance between work and private life. Besides this social aspect, moving to a more digital working environment can also help to improve the environmental footprint. For example, the digitalization of paper-based processes eliminates the need for printing and therefore conserves valuable resources. Since the start of the pandemic, significantly more meetings have also taken place online. Overall, remote working and more digital events have reduced commuting and business travel, which will likely lower related GHG emissions.

Digital collaboration as key enabler

Lenzing constantly continues its journey to improve the digital collaboration by leveraging the opportunities provided by mature products available on the market. Providing the opportunity for employees to work with a good user-experience from almost everywhere in a mobile, secure, stable and fast way is an important task for Lenzing’s IT-teams.

Extend reach to empower workforce

Better information allows better collaboration and better decisions. Following Lenzing’s purpose “Advancing our world with better choices”, Lenzing empowers its employees across all levels by providing digital company information, e-learning and training contents wherever they are needed. They are essential tools as they promote team-member and work-related exchange among Lenzing’s blue-collar workers right through management.

Digital Academy

The well-established Digital Academy provides a comprehensive training program for relevant IT applications and topics. Its medium-term focus is on SAP, digital workplace applications, IT security and data protection.

Content is provided in training formats (classroom training, virtual training, videos, printed material, etc.) that reflect the needs of the target groups. A modular structure enables training up to the level of application experts (e.g. key users or IT consultants). Based on our system landscape, an internal website has been established available to all application users, providing a clear overview and guaranteeing easy access to all contents. In 2023, there were 61 training courses on SAP and digital workplace that reached 674 participants.

New technologies and new products being used at Lenzing are constantly added to the training portfolio and to existing applications.

Digital solutions for transparency and traceability across entire supply chains

Beyond ongoing digitalization processes in its own operations, Lenzing is committed to driving digital solutions throughout the supply chain. Lenzing therefore aims to improve transparency and traceability in the textile and nonwovens industry. Transparency means openness towards the people who come into contact with Lenzing fibers. This is crucial as only an honest discussion with the industry can ensure traceability, verifying the origin of Lenzing fibers throughout the supply chain up to the finished garment.

Lenzing’s fiber identification system and E-Branding Service form the basis of its overall approach to transparency, while the TextileGenesis™ blockchain project uses the data for further optimized traceability. Cooperation with the Global Textile Scheme contributes to efficient fiber data exchange for the Digital Product Passport in the textiles sector. Additionally, the real-time ocean shipment tracker drives digitalization and transparency in the global fiber supply chain.

Lenzing follows a three-pillar approach to a more sustainable and transparent supply chain:

Building blocks of transparency

Fiber identification system

Lenzing uses a technology for fiber identification. The system was successfully implemented for LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded viscose fibers, TENCEL™ branded modal and lyocell fibers, TENCEL™ x REFIBRA™ branded lyocell fibers and the LENZING™ FR portfolio. Furthermore, Lenzing has incorporated this patented technology into its range of specialty fibers LENZING™ Lyocell Skin, designed for beauty applications and marketed under the brand name VEOCEL™. To demonstrate their safety in skin-contact applications, these fibers have undergone evaluation by Asthma-Allergy Denmark, which has confirmed their low risk of causing skin allergies. In 2023, Lenzing expanded its portfolio of fibers with the fiber identification technology to the spun-dyed LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded viscose in black color and to LENZING™ ECOVERO™ x REFIBRA™, a newly produced viscose fiber with recycled content.

E-Branding Service

The Lenzing E-Branding Service is an online platform that provides customers along the value chain with access to Lenzing’s certification and licensing options. It therefore protects the brands and retailers by providing assurance that their products do not contain fibers made from wood from controversial sources. Furthermore, it guarantees that the fibers are produced in state-of-the-art-production facilities that meet high standards for resource efficiency and environmental and social responsibility.

Registered Lenzing textile partners can apply for fabric certifications, license agreements or Lenzing hangtags. Lenzing nonwoven partners can also register and apply for combined certification and license agreements. In addition to the supply chain disclosure, certification also includes fabric testing by Lenzing for fabrics that really meet the defined standards.

The fiber identification technology relies on the physical identification of fiber origin at different stages of production such as the fabric and garment stage. This enables full fiber origin traceability and counterfeiting protection. It therefore protects the brands and retailers by providing assurance that their products do not contain fibers made from wood from controversial sources. This guarantees that the fibers are produced in state-of-the-art-production facilities that meet high standards for resource efficiency and environmental and social responsibility.

Target groups for the Lenzing E-Branding Service are all partners along the value chain, starting with direct customers (e.g. those who buy Lenzing fibers) to fabric/roll-good manufacturers/converters and manufacturers of the end products all the way to retailers who ultimately position the goods at the point of sales, including online stores.

Ingredient branding to communicate raw material sustainability

Lenzing has adopted an ingredient branding approach in which it collaborates with brand partners in the value chain who convey the valuable properties of the fiber to the end consumers. Retailers, in turn, need supply chain partners who can positively support them in communicating a transparent and consistent sustainability story. Lenzing has seized this opportunity with its branding platform.

Downstream value chain track and traceability via blockchain technology

Building on several successful pilot projects in 2019 with the innovative start-up TextileGenesis™, Lenzing introduced a digital platform for textile supply chain traceability in 2020 – a milestone for the Lenzing Group. The digital platform was launched in November 2020 for TENCEL™ and LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded fibers.

The platform provides customers, partners and consumers with an overview of the entire textile supply chain. Supply chain traceability has become a top priority for apparel and home textile brands. Lenzing’s new blockchain-enabled supply chain traceability platform supports the entire supply chain in meeting increasing demands for transparency and sustainability.

More than 4530 different textile value chain companies (spinners, fabric mills, garment makers etc.) have joined the platform. Several large fashion brands such as H&M and Bestseller have started rolling out TextileGenesis™ for all regenerated cellulosic fibers. Lenzing has experienced an increasing demand for fibers with blockchain traceability. The number of Fibercoins™ issued every month is rising steadily.

TextileGenesis™ platform: Fibercoin™ technology to ensure traceability along the supply chain

By using innovative Fibercoin™ technology in the TextileGenesis™ platform, Lenzing and other brand partners can now issue digital tokens (blockchain assets) in direct proportion to the physical shipments of TENCEL™ and LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded fibers. These digital tokens provide a unique “fingerprint” and authentication mechanism, preventing adulteration, providing a more secure and trustworthy, digital chain of custody across the entire textile supply chain, and, most importantly, ensuring the materials are sustainably produced.

Digital Product Passport

Textiles are the priority product group for regulation under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), within the umbrella of the EU Green Deal. ESPR will also establish information requirements for the Digital Product Passport (DPP), enhancing transparency and data granularity to promote circularity and sustainability in textiles. The European Commission is working on standards and IT solutions for the DPP. These are expected to become mandatory for textiles around 2026, as manual data generation will not be feasible until then due to the enormous quantity of data required.

In 2023, Lenzing contributed support for the product class of regenerated cellulosic fibers to the Global Textile Scheme (GTS), which serves as a unified industry standard for all textile value chains. GTS provides a straightforward and cost-effective framework for efficient data exchange, spanning from fiber production to recycling. GTS collaborates with reputable IT providers and textile experts from companies across the textile value chain. The GTS standard facilitates the conversion of existing data into a standardized format, allowing users to customize it to their own preferences. This streamlines the process, eliminating the need for labor-intensive data harmonization and extensive bilateral translation efforts.

Combining real-time shipment and carbon visibility

A real-time ocean shipment visibility tool has been available to Lenzing customers worldwide since September 2023, driving digitalization and transparency in the global fiber supply chain.

Lenzing has launched the real-time ocean shipment visibility tool in collaboration with project44, a digital supply chain solutions company. To address supply chain complexities, Lenzing has integrated a real-time application programming interface (API) connecting its ERP (enterprise resource planning) system with project44’s platform “Movement”. This combines AI, GPS sensors and machine learning to provide customers with real-time data on fiber orders, including shipment status, container location, vessel route tracking and estimated arrival times.

Continuous digitalization investments in operations

As part of the Operations Digital Innovation roadmap, Lenzing focussed on four major digital initiatives in 2023:

Data-driven quality control

Lenzing uses data to strengthen production processes and workflows, in order to produce top quality and send every single fiber bale directly to the customer. Several successful Data Science pilot applications demonstrated the multidimensional value of data use in the viscose modal production environment at the Lenzing site (Austria) in 2023.

Mobile maintenance

Mobile maintenance offers a convenient and user-friendly solution for employees. It replaces the bureaucratic work and guarantees “state of the art” maintenance. The team at the Heiligenkreuz site (Austria) installed a cloud based pilot application for mobile order management and multi resource scheduling in 2023.

Augmented reality (AR) for training

For standard operating procedures, AR creates up-to-date training opportunities to assist existing and new employees in production and maintenance. In 2023, the Viscose/Modal division at the Lenzing site (Austria) tested the feasibiltiy of an AR tool to create an instruction manual for production employees. As a next step, a pilot project to cover the most important use cases is planned to be executed in 2024.

Digital twin technologies

Digital twin technologies combine several aspects throughout the lifecycle of a plant, providing the combination of data and information of existing systems with new tools. They enable the simulation of differnet scenarios independent of the physical infrastructure on a global level. The global Engineering Team evaluated tools and the implementation within the existing system landscape and will further provide valuable implementation models in 2024.

These initiatives and measures lead to OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency), occupational safety and environmental impact improvements.