Simulation-Based Energy Efficiency Improvement for Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

Energy efficiency improvement as well as carbon footprint reduction in the manufacturing industry becomes increasingly important for a green world from the point of sustainability. However, because of the complexity of modern manufacturing systems, most of the existing research efforts in energy efficiency improvement only focus on either single-machine system or process level. Seldom work has been performed to study the potential of energy consumption reduction for typical manufacturing systems with multiple machines and buffers. In this paper, a simulation-based method is proposed to study various strategies for energy efficiency improvement of complex manufacturing systems. This study provides an initial framework to study the real time energy control of multi-machine manufacturing systems, and demonstrates the energy efficiency improvement and energy saving potentials by adjusting the machines’ power level according to their operation states while maintaining the system throughput. Comparison between the results with and without power level adjustment is performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Dynamic Energy Control for Energy Efficiency Improvement of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems Using Markov Decision Process

IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics Systems ◽

10.1109/tsmc.2013.2256856 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 43 (5) ◽

pp. 1195-1205 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Lin Li ◽

Zeyi Sun

Keyword(s):

Energy Efficiency ◽

Markov Decision Process ◽

Decision Process ◽

Manufacturing Systems ◽

Sustainable Manufacturing ◽

Efficiency Improvement ◽

Energy Control ◽

Energy Efficiency Improvement ◽

Markov Decision

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Simulation-Based Optimization of Electricity Demand Response for Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

Volume 1: Materials; Micro and Nano Technologies; Properties, Applications and Systems; Sustainable Manufacturing ◽

10.1115/msec2014-4006 ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Leah Cuyler ◽

Zeyi Sun ◽

Lin Li

Keyword(s):

Demand Response ◽

Manufacturing Systems ◽

Manufacturing Sector ◽

Sustainable Manufacturing ◽

Optimization Method ◽

Electricity Demand ◽

System Throughput ◽

Commercial Building ◽

Simulation Based ◽

Simulation Based Optimization

Electricity demand response is considered a promising tool to balance the electricity demand and supply during peak periods. It can effectively reduce the cost of building and operating those peaking power generators that are only run a few hundred hours per year to satisfy the peak demand. The research on the electricity demand response implementation for residential and commercial building sectors has been very mature. Recently, it has also been extended to the manufacturing sector. In this paper, a simulation-based optimization method is developed to identify the optimal demand response decisions for the typical manufacturing systems with multiple machines and buffers. Different objectives, i.e. minimizing the power consumption under the constraint of system throughput, and maximize the overall earnings considering the tradeoff between power demand reduction and potential production loss, are considered. Different energy control decisions are analyzed and compared regarding the potential influence on the throughput of manufacturing system due to the different control actions adopted by throughput bottleneck machine.

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