Energy supply orientation in production planning systems

The efficient and economic allocation of resources is one main goal in the field of production planning and control. Therefore, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP-Systems) are used to support the production planning process. These systems strongly focus on dates, inventory and capacities. Due to the German exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy, a new variable gains in importance throughout all areas of production: Energy. As a reaction, energy and power demands of the manufacturing systems are more and more monitored within the factories in order to enable energy-efficient operations. The energy supply of a factory is currently not recognized in the planning process. This paper provides a systematic approach to integrate energy supply information to the production planning process on the basis of ERP-Systems. This will be discussed by combining the idea of energy-efficiency and energy-flexibility as well as the alternatives of a factory's internal and external energy supply.