A methodology for verified energy savings in manufacturing facilities through changes in operational behaviour

Abstract

The manufacturing industry is increasingly accountable for the environmental impact resulting from its activities. Manufacturing operations design has shifted from a traditional strictly cost and quality approach to more recently including energy efficiency, zero waste and reduced carbon emissions. Whilst manufacturing companies have focused on reducing energy at a facilities level, research indicates that specific production processes generate a significant environmental impact through energy consumption, resource depletion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To understand the consumption of energy in a production environment it is important to relate the specific energy usage to the operating processes and production outputs. This allows the identification of auxiliary (non-value added) energy within production which is as the area with the greatest potential for savings through changes in operational behaviour. This paper outlines the monitoring at a factory and at machine level that can identify where and, more importantly, when waste energy occurs. The analysis of the cost of auxiliary energy is shown to be a motivational factor for company management to engage with energy efficiency measures and finally the paper discusses the eight dimensions necessary to engage employees and to drive cultural change in an organisation. The current state of practice in relation to energy in a case-study in the Precision Manufacturing Sector in Ireland was investigated and the proposed approach was applied and has been shown to successfully deliver verifiable savings with low implementation costs.