Energy Management in Manufacturing Systems

Conventionally, improving production efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness has been the primary research focus of production management, while energy consumption has received relatively little attention. Energy consumption plays a more and more important role in manufacturing environment. This is mainly driven by energy cost and environmental concerns. When the energy system becomes complicated and coupled with ongoing production, it is very difficult to hunt the "hidden treasure" which affects the overall benefit of a manufacturing system. This paper provides a systematic method for energy management in a production system. We start from dynamic production transient analysis and provide quantitative analysis for energy saving opportunity in a system. Furthermore, energy saving is integrated into production system which includes downtime and throughput to provide integrated energy management framework for a production system. A case study is conducted to demonstrate its potential on energy savings in a multi-stage manufacturing system.