Denis Kurle

Towards Eco-Factories of the Future

One-third of the global greenhouse gas emissions is caused by combusting fossil fuels to manufacture products and goods. Contemporary initiatives to lower the emissions chiefly focus on eco-efficiency, seeking for minimized energy demand and to a smaller extend also for minimized resource consumption. In addition to that, new technologies, a demographically changing workforce and the desire for new individualized products put further pressure on manufacturing companies. To encounter all those new trends and challenges successfully, various perspectives of a factory have been proposed to improve the understanding of all involved interdependencies between the factory elements. However, most of those perspectives lack to take all contemporary challenges and trends into account. Therefore, this chapter provides an extended perspective on the elements of a future factory.

Heat Flows in Production Systems and its Modeling and Simulation

This chapter introduces the theoretical foundation of the book by describing relevant terms and concepts of production systems in general and heat flows in particular (Sect. 2.1). It further presents two modeling methods to capture the behavior of heat flows in production systems and to provide design related options for improvements (Sect. 2.2). The chapter ends with a summary of preliminary findings concerning heat flows in production systems and its modeling methods (Sect. 2.3).

State of Research

This chapter identifies, analyzes and evaluates existing research approaches in context of planning heat flows in production systems. For this purpose, specific evaluation criteria and sub-criteria are formulated first (Sect. 3.1). Due to the extent of the topic, the core field of research is delimited from other interesting but rather adjacent fields of research (Sect. 3.2). A detailed review of identified approaches from the core field of research helps to understand the unique character of each approach (Sect. 3.3). A comparative overview and discussion of those approaches subject to the initially defined evaluation criteria reveals existing gaps of each approach and states the basis for future research demand (Sect. 3.4).

Concept for an Integrated Planning of Heat Flows in Production Systems

The introduction of an integrated planning concept for heat flows is motivated by the identified discrepancy between existing approaches and defined requirements. To close this discrepancy and further elaborate on this issue, the chapter first formulates different objectives, requirements and potential stakeholders for an appropriate concept (Sect. 4.1). Based on those objectives and requirements, a system perspective is derived which is capable of including and reflecting all relevant system levels (Sect. 4.2). Those aspects are broad together in the developed model concept which is embedded into a problem solving process, provides various models as well as their interactions to perform diverse evaluations, and enhance an interdisciplinary system understanding. The models are described regarding both the conceptual logic as well as considerations for implementation (Sect. 4.3). In more detail, the existing heat flows in production systems demonstrate the necessity to use an integrated approach in order to gain a sound system understanding. Thus, it is described how the different system entities can be modeled (Sect. 4.4). Different analysis and visualization methods per system level further facilitate the understanding of individual system entity’s performance (Sect. 4.5) as well as their impact and repercussions on other system levels. Those methods interact with the system entity models. The chapter closes with an application procedure explaining how the concept can be used in practice (Sect. 4.6).

Exemplary Application of Concept

The chapter presents three different application cases of the developed concept and its models to underline their applicability and potentials. Although each application case follows the proposed application procedure, case specific features in terms of practical relevance and implication are emphasized individually per case and procedural step. Therefore, the generic character of the developed concept is tailored to meet the requirements of a components manufacturing (Sect. 5.1), a cooling water system (Sect. 5.2) as well as an integration into a learning factory (Sect. 5.3). The two industrial application cases base on real data, which is why many values have been altered by correction factors due to reasons of confidentiality.

Toolbox zur Steigerung der Ressourceneffizienz im metallverarbeitenden Gewerbe

Strategien zur Steigerung der okonomischen und okologischen Leistungsfahigkeit von Unternehmen werden in der Regel aus der lokalen Perspektive verfolgt, wobei Wechselwirkungen zwischen verschiedenen Akteuren einer unternehmensubergreifenden Wertschopfungskette kaum Berucksichtigung finden. Dies fuhrt haufig zu Problemverschiebungen, Zielkonflikten und letztendlich zu lokalen aber nicht zu globalen Verbesserungen. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellen die Autoren das Konzept einer Toolbox zur Aufdeckung von ungenutzten Ressourceneffizienzpotentialen sowie von Wechselwirkungen lokaler Verbesserungsstrategien und resultierender Zielkonflikte auf Ebene der Wertschopfungskette vor. Die Anwendbarkeit der Toolbox und daraus resultierende Vorteile werden anhand eines realen Fallbeispiels aus der Industrie illustriert.