Resource efficiency: Visualizing energy consumption to optimize tool design

In many areas of engineering development, resource efficiency is an important quality characteristic. Customers pay more attention to energy consumption caused by the production of the desired products. Products that require a lot of energy in the production are referred as “critical” by politics and society. Especially the field of tool and die industry - despite the implementation of initial measures to increase resource efficiency - has immense potential. Significant opportunities for improvement can be achieved by visualizing the energy consumption of tools and their components. In particular, the analysis of the relationship between the energy required to produce tools and the energy consumption of used tools has great potential. Taking account of resource efficiency, the overall optimum is desired. Rising electricity prices and the increased sensitivity on this part of industry, society and politics allow the economic realization of these improvements. The “Innovation Alliance Car Body Green Technologies” (InnoCaT) is one out of ten innovative alliances that are financed by the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In the focus of InnoCaT is the resource efficiency of tools. One main research objective - based on the dependencies of the energy consumption in the individual life cycle phases - is to develop a model which optimizes the design of a tool. The aim is to minimize the energy consumption over all life cycle phases. In this paper the latest research findings of InnoCaT are presented and needs for further research are identified.