Optimal production planning for flexible manufacturing systems: an energy-based approach

Abstract

Abstract Production programming in a manufacturing industry is usually performed based on off-line optimisations of the processing times or plant productivity. However, most of these approaches do not consider the energy market and its fluctuations. Therefore, it is not possible to take advantage of these fluctuations to also minimise the energy costs and to increase the plant profit. In this regard, a control strategy based on the economic Model Predictive Control approach is proposed to reduce energy costs during the operation of a manufacturing plant. The proposed controller determines the instants in which the production programs should be executed to satisfy the daily demand while minimising the energy costs through regular updates of the energy prices according to the current energy market. Besides, by implementing a control strategy in real time, changes in the demand of parts according to the customer requirements could also be considered, adding more flexibility to the plant operation. The proposed control strategy has been tested in simulation, and the obtained results show that energy costs can be reduced without affecting the plant productivity.