Learn to work more efficiently by reusing your objects in multiple products, and create consistent LCA models
In this article, you will learn about the benefits of reusing objects - your main building blocks in Mobius. We will show you how to link them to products, or other objects.
Reusing an object means that the object is identical wherever it is used. Therefore, products and objects are interconnected if they contain identical subitems - if you change the reused object, it will be changed everywhere it is used! We emphasize the importance of the interconnectedness of objects. At the end of this article we will dive a bit deeper into this.
There are two main benefits of reusing objects (like building blocks) for other products:
1. Improves efficiency - you only need to model the object once;
2. Consistency in your model - to ensure that each object is modeled the same way. This prevents having two different outcomes of a similar object. For example, two similar but different references from the database were chosen.
We will use adding the object 'Transport from Supplier - Cotton Fabric Black' to the object ‘Cotton Fabric Black’ as an example. You can find this object in the T-shrit Demo workspace in your account.
'Cotton Fabric Black' is an object and is one of the key components needed to make a T-shirt. 'Cotton Fabric Black' however, in itself is an object that consists of various materials and processes (e.g. fabric, bleach, electricity). Objects therefore do not have to be the lowest level item, and can consist of many 'sub'-objects. Each of these objects can be reused in Mobius and your complete inventory of objects can be found in the Object library.
Step 1: Adding transport to ‘Cotton Fabric Black’ (see picture below).
The result: By adding the object 'Transport from Supplier - Cotton Fabric Black' to the ‘Cotton Fabric Black’ object, it automatically updates all products and objects in which ‘Cotton Fabric Black’ is used. For example, the transport object was automatically added to the product ‘T-shirt Cotton Black’ as well, because this product contains the object ‘Cotton Fabric Black’. Time saver alert! ⏰
Reusing objects helps to increase your efficiency with modeling. Especially if you want to model multiple products that have similar components with slight differences in mass. Reusing objects also improves the consistency of your LCA models as the selected reference from the databases will remain the same and allows for easier and better comparison of your products.
Tip: when you start to reuse objects, it is important to know what the object originally was used for. As such, put some thought into how you name your objects, so that you can always remember at a later stage what you initially modelled the object for. Consider making use of the 'description' field to add any relevant information that uniquely describes the object.
What if my product is not identical? Can I then not reuse objects like building blocks? For instance, when a certain material comes from different suppliers located in different parts of the world. The mode of transport could be different, as well as the traveled distance. In this case it is still possible to reuse the objects, but you would want to make a copy of the existing object and adapt it before adding it to another product. This is possible - have a read through how the scenario functionality works!
Tip: If your Object library is becoming full, consider using folders to organize all your objects. Read more about folders here.
Additionally, you can move products to the object library and vice-versa, if an item is placed in the wrong place. Take a look at how to move products and objects here.