Abstract
Energy management has become one of the top priorities in all sectors of the economy originating from both legislative obligations and energy cost. The manufacturing sector accounts for more than 30% of the total energy demand. Industrial practice relies on methods such as energy auditing, energy monitoring and control. However, this approach can be considered as reactive, since the energy requirements for manufacturing a specific part are not considered during the planning of the production. A proactive approach is lacking that would allow the design and planning of the process plan strategy with the energy efficiency of the processes being one of the decision-making criteria. The objective of the present paper is to propose and validate a decision support tool for assessing the energy efficiency of alternative process plans. The decision support is based on energy auditing, life-cycle assessment and TOPSIS method for ranking various alternative process plans. The tool has been validated in a high pressure ceramics casting plant.
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