Operational methods for minimization of energy consumption of manufacturing equipment

• Published in: International journal of production research Vol. 45; no. 18-19; pp. 4247 - 4271
• Main Authors: Mouzon, Gilles, Yildirim, Mehmet B., Twomey, Janet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis Group 15.09.2007; Taylor & Francis LLC
• Subjects: Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Energy efficient production planning; Green manufacturing; Industrial equipment; Manufacturing; Mathematical programming; Production planning; Single machine scheduling; Studies; Sustainable manufacturing
• ISSN: 0020-7543; 1366-588X
• DOI: 10.1080/00207540701450013

This paper develops operational methods for the minimization of the energy consumption of manufacturing equipment. It is observed that there can be a significant amount of energy savings when non-bottleneck (i.e. underutilized) machines/equipment are turned off when they will be idle for a certain amount of time. Using this fact, several dispatching rules are proposed. A detailed performance analysis indicates that the proposed dispatching rules are effective in decreasing the energy consumption of especially underutilized manufacturing equipment. In addition, a multi-objective mathematical programming model is proposed to minimize the energy consumption and total completion time. Using this approach, a production manager will have a set of non-dominated solutions (i.e. the set of efficient solutions) which he/she can use to determine the most efficient production sequence which will minimize the total energy consumption while optimizing the total completion time.