Towards industry 4.0 in corporate energy management

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is the "networking of autonomous, situationally self-controlling, knowledge based, sensor supported and, spatially distributed production resources incl. their planning and control systems" (Arbeitskreis Industrie 4.0). With ISO 50.001 an industry norm is available, improving the corporate energy efficiency through its implementation. For that ISO 50.001 demands to formulate a company-wide energy policy, to ensure the determination of the organization and information structures, and is designed for the target of energy efficiency improvement. Overall, the topic addressed by ISO 50.001 is so complex that IT support is required. Actually, more than 120 software systems are offered on the market to support corporate energy management. When checking these systems their very coarse-granular character becomes obvious. A detailed system, regarding single industrial facilities' collection of energy consumption data, is not possible, with a result that exclusively involves a monitoring and reporting function. Planning and controlling is not supported. Thus, existing software systems have elementary deficits concerning Industry 4.0, because they are neither able to receive data (sensor supported) in real time, nor do they have (automated) planning and controlling components based on respective knowledge-based systems, business intelligence and big data procedures. We developed an energy management system with the possibility to collect energy consumption data finely granular on the level of production facilities based on data sheets of plants manufacturers. Further, a modular and self-organizational communication system (as a hard/software combination) has been developed that "reads" internal electrical energy data from the production facilities in real time. A further system enhancement consists of sensor-supported flow measurement of fluid or gaseous energy sources and real-time provision for the energy management system. In this way, an essential component of an Industry 4.0 system for the corporate energy management is realized: the detailed and timely provision of energy consumption data. A last step for developing a corporate energy management system conforming the Industry 4.0 requirements procedures off descriptive data analysis, optimization algorithm and simulation processes shall be developed and big data analyses and business intelligence procedures shall be applied. These optimization procedures shall achieve Industry 4.0 criteria of selfdependent planning and controlling.