Optimizing energy costs by intelligent production scheduling

Abstract

Small and medium sized enterprises tackle the problem of high energy consumption and costs. Reducing both by fixing leaks, improving the thermal insulation of buildings and switching of unnecessary heating/cooling are first steps. More advanced steps are reengineering machinery and processes. Within this paper results of a research project are presented. Unused potential for increasing energy efficiency can be found by optimizing the production schedule. A full scale PPC software was developed which is able to schedule production without energy peaks and furthermore is able to create a 24h energy forecast to hand over to the energy supplier.