Methodical Approach to Identify Energy Efficiency Measures in Factory Planning Based on Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Energy efficiency has become an important objective for industrial companies and its importance is constantly rising. Factory planning plays an important role to reach the challenging goals for energy efficiency, because energy consumption can be influenced at early planning stages more effectively. Existing methods with the goal to increase energy efficiency can only be used during factory operation, because they need detailed quantitative insights into a process. Furthermore, they mainly provide scientific support for the analysis rather than for the identification of improvement measures. Therefore, a concept has been developed to systematically identify energy efficiency measures on the basis of qualitative information about a process. The basic idea is to define fundamental energy efficiency approaches and to make them available for factory planning participants in a systematic and structured manner. The overall concept and the steps that are necessary for the development of this concept are presented in this paper. The approach is explained by means of a case example dealing with internal transport planning, which represents an important part of factory planning. Based on this, potentials and limits of use as well as further research needs are deduced.KeywordsFactory PlanningEnergy Efficiency ModelEarly Planning StagesPlanning SituationsEnergetic ObjectsThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.