A Simulation-based Framework for Improving the Ecological and Economic Transparency in Multi-variant Production☆

Abstract Multi-variant production has to cope with various challenges caused by external factors such as a customer and competition driven increase in variants, the corresponding growth of internal complexity as well as the rising demand for more resource efficiency. In order to being able to optimize their manufacturing systems continuously and target-oriented, companies need to improve the transparency about ecological and economic inefficiencies. This paper presents a simulation-based framework for improving the ecological and economic transparency in manufacturing systems. Within the presented framework energy consumption and costs are allocated according to their actual cause. This enables a user to identify influencing variables, which cause variety-induced non-value adding energy consumption as well as costs in manufacturing systems. Based on this knowledge, target-oriented lean and green optimization can be applied.