Martin Swat

Selecting Manufacturing Process Chains in the Early Stage of the Product Engineering Process with Focus on Energy Consumption

Manufacturing process chains describe the concept of how the transformation of a raw material into a finished product is achieved. Within the planning phase of the process chains not only technical and economic requirements must be met but also ecological aspects need to be considered, e.g. the energy consumption during the production phase. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how the energy consumption of process chains can be considered in the early stage of the planning phase. It provides an overview of the methods that are available to describe and predict the energy demand of consumers in process chains. The presented method is based on planning data like characteristic power consumption parameters of manufacturing equipment and related time parameters. It aims at predicting the energy consumption per product. The data is needed for predictive assessment of alternative process chains and to assess the impact of energy consumption during the production phase in life cycle considerations. Finally, this chapter presents an example for the energy-aware design and selection of a preferred process chain from several alternatives. By this it is illustrated how the presented heuristic approach can be applied.

Planning Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing Process Chains – an Innovative Approach for an Industrial Product-Service System

Due to competitors in low-wage countries, many manufacturing companies must pursue new business solutions to convince industrial customers about their products. Offering solutions that meet customer needs by products with integrated services, so called Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2), is one option to ensure competitiveness. One challenge is how to compensate for energy costs in an IPS2 by energy efficient manufacturing. In this paper, a scenario is considered where a consortium of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Energy Planning Consultants act as an IPS2 provider to acquire new customers by energy efficient manufacturing operations.

Energy Consumption as One Possible Exclusion Criterion for the Reuse of Old Equipment in New Production Lines

The reuse of production equipment represents a promising approach to saving investment costs. Therefore, more and more companies are taking the topic of reuse into consideration. However, there are also risks and disadvantages concerning the reuse of old production equipment. In some cases, reusing old equipment can eventually be more expensive than buying new resources. Therefore, an adequate reuse assessment is necessary. Not only technical factors and investment costs have to be considered, life cycle aspects such as energy consumption play a crucial role as well. In this paper, an approach to a risk-reduced reuse of old equipment is presented.

Energy Consumption: One Criterion for the Sustainable Design of Process Chains

Rising energy costs lead to rising product costs and cause companies to search for methods to reduce energy consumption in production process chains. Therefore, sustainability becomes a matter of competitiveness. Energy consumption in production is determined by the design of parts and the manufacturing process chains. If companies manage to assess and optimize the energy consumption of manufacturing process chains during the design phase, they will be able to reduce energy consumption and to take important competitive advantages. For the decision–making process, it is crucial to know at what point in the planning phase a decision about alternatives in production process chains can be taken. This paper presents an approach to take into account the energy consumption in the early stage of process chain design.