Energy-sensitive control strategies for decoupled production systems

Rising demand for energy caused by emerging economies, decreasing oil stocks, and the intended nuclear phase-out in some industrial countries has led to new problems concerning sufficient and on time energy supply. Since availability of energy has a dramatic influence on production, energy has to be considered a process prerequisite instead of a production-related overhead topic, as usually done. Prospective considerations in MES and ERP systems will need to treat energy as a limited resource just like machine capacity and time. Hence, both products and processes will compete for energy. This paper discusses selected production control tasks, methods, and strategies for discrete part manufacturing. It aims at identifying the extent to which energy features can be implemented next to established logistic goals. Based on first research activities, new approaches were derived in order to develop tools for an energy-sensitive production control focusing on limited capacity of production resources.