Energy economics in the manufacturing industry: A return on investment strategy

• We create a return on investment strategy for production line machine replacement.
• We present a control scheme to reduce energy consumption on the production line.
• Decreasing energy consumption on the production line increases profits.

Manufacturers lack the economic tools to properly perform maintenance procedures to increase manufacturing reliability while reducing system energy consumption. A return on investment strategy is developed to provide plant managers with a quantitative method to optimize the maintenance actions that lead to the largest return on investment. Over the long term, this energy economic analysis results in the largest decrease in energy costs for a manufacturing facility. A control methodology is developed to increase profits on a daily basis by inserting energy opportunity windows at various machines thus reducing energy consumption with minimal production impact. A simulation case study is performed to validate the return on investment strategy and to test the control methodology's impact on the overall profit of the facility.