Reducing Costs in the Manufacturing Industry: An Energy Economic Perspective Available to Purchase

Manufacturers lack the proper economic tools to improve energy efficiency of the plant. This paper uses energy economic analysis to increase the overall profit of the manufacturing facility by reducing energy consumption with minimal throughput impact. A return on investment strategy is developed to give plant managers the quantitative tools to select the machine which, when replaced, will lead to the largest return on investment. Over the long term, this will lead to the largest decrease in energy costs. To increase profits on a daily basis, a control methodology is developed that uses energy opportunity windows to insert downtime events that have minimal production impact, but reduce the overall energy consumption. A simulation case study is performed to test the control methodology and the return on investment strategy to show the effect of both on the profit of the manufacturing facility.