Data Requirements and Representation for Simulation of Energy Consumption in Production Systems

Paper in proceeding, 2011

Recently, the application area for Discrete Event Simulation has been extended from focus on economical aspects to include ecologic sustainability. Therefore, this paper aims to specify how new input parameters, such as electrical power, should be represented in simulation models. The study includes more than 230 000 power measurements from a production line with five multi-operational machines. The variability between production cycles is low, which indicates that statistical representations are unnecessary. Furthermore, results show that 33% of the total energy consumption stems from non-value-added activities, which can be reduced by optimizing the production flow using dynamic simulations.