Intelligent Systems for the Prognosis of Energy Consumption in Manufacturing and Assembly

This paper is based on a current research project and describes methods which aim to contribute to the estimation of the energy consumption in the production of goods. Today, the energy a product requires during its operation is the object of many activities in research and development. However, the energy necessary for the production of goods is very often not analyzed in comparable depth. The energy consumption in production and disposal is determined very early in the product development process by designers and engineers, for example, through selection of raw materials, explicit and implicit requirements concerning the manufacturing and assembly processes or through decisions concerning the product architecture. Today, developers and engineers have at their disposal manifold design and simulation tools, which can help to predict the energy consumption during operation relatively accurately. In contrast, tools with the objective to predict the energy consumption in production and disposal are not available apart from the first material databases, such as Eco Materials Adviser in Autodesk.Calculations of the energy consumption in the production can be based on certain volumes and/or the weights of the components or of certain sections of the components. For example, the milling volume for milling operations can be used to determine the energy necessary for this milling operation. Research in production technology can these days provide the necessary tables and equations to determine this energy, if only the milling volume and the milling operations are defined accurately enough. The geometry is developed today almost exclusively in three-dimensional CAD systems. In such systems, the volumes and weights of all components are available today; therefore, the extension is very promising to couple future systems with CAD systems.