Decision Support for Energy Efficient Production in Product and Production Development

Realizing extensive energy savings in the manufacturing of products calls for a comprehensive strategy, exploiting cross-departmental influences. Approaches that consider aspects of product and production development independently do not go far enough and are often already exhausted. In previous research, the authors introduced a correlation matrix that assesses the influence between different phases of the product creation process (i.e. product development and production development). This matrix is taken as a basis for a decision support in order to choose suitable methods according to the early phases of the product creation process. The methods that have been developed address the influences between different phases on the product and production side, assessing the energy consumption in manufacturing. As a result, the most energy efficient product solutions - related to the manufacturing - as well as production system solutions are determined. On the basis of these decisions, products and production systems that consume lower energy in production can be detailed.