Energy consumption is of great interest to manufacturing companies.
Beyond considering individual processes and machines, the perspective on
process chains and factories as a whole holds major potentials for
energy efficiency improvements. To exploit these potentials, dynamic
interactions of different processes as well as auxiliary equipment (e.g.
compressed air generation) need to be taken into account. In addition,
planning and controlling manufacturing systems require balancing
technical, economic and environmental objectives. Therefore, an
innovative and comprehensive methodology - with a generic energy
flow-oriented manufacturing simulation environment as a core element -
is developed and embedded into a step-by-step application cycle. The
concept is applied in its entirety to a wide range of case studies such
as aluminium die casting, weaving mills, and printed circuit board
assembly in order to demonstrate the broad applicability and the
benefits that can be achieved.