Sustainable Industrial Plants: Energy-Efficient, Asset-Aware, and Waste-Averse

Abstract

Global competition and reduced profit margins often push modern manufacturing systems toward continuously operating close to their full capacity. This can cause additional stress on the components and even lead to their premature failure, which could in turn result in halt in operation, inventory buildup, potential waste, and possible need for component replacement. Sustainability has often been viewed as utilization of renewable and green energy. However, this paper puts forth an integrated framework for optimal asset and energy management in a manufacturing plant in order to promote sustainable operation. An operation strategy has been devised that minimizes the risk of component failure on the rest of the system, the operation cost, the emissions, as well as material waste due to unwanted postprocess inventory buildup. The problem formulation is nonlinear and mixed-integer in nature, with multiple objectives that at times can be contradictory. Hence, a goal programming approach is used in order to ensure that all objectives are given equal priority.