025-1302 Modeling buildings , facilities and manufacturing operations to reduce energy consumption

Traditionally, manufacturing facilities and building services are considered to be supplementary to manufacturing operations. Manufacturing operations use and discard energy with the support of facilities. Additionally, these disciplines have been pursued independently to date; the design and improvement of buildings and manufacturing systems typically carried out in isolation. Therefore improvements in energy and other resource use to work towards sustainable manufacturing have been sub-optimal. This paper presents research in which buildings, facilities and manufacturing operations are viewed as interrelated systems. The work documents practices, tactics and specifies modeling tools, that enable integrated analysis of manufacturing site energy and resource use. The objectives are to improve overall energy efficiency and to exploit opportunities to use energy or other waste from one process as potential inputs to other processes. The novelty here is the combined simulation of production and building energy use and waste in order to reduce overall resource consumption. The paper presents a literature review, develops the conceptual modeling approach and introduces the prototype with industrial cases to support activities towards sustainable manufacturing. Introduction The Bruntland report (WCED 1987) defines sustainable development as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Focusing on sustainable manufacturing there is the need to recognise the triple bottom line of social justice (people), environmental quality (planet) and economic prosperity (profit) (Elkington, 1997). There is significant work underway in both academia and industry to develop tools and techniques for sustainable manufacturing and apply them for tangible benefit. As a result of rising prices and concerns over energy security and climate change, energy is a major focus. Documented cases and achievements presented on corporate websites show that significant benefits can be obtained. However, it is not until a sustainability mindset is adopted that the opportunities can be identified in the first place.