The topic of energy management has long been an integral part of many companies.
Our customers are now practicing it extensively in their plants with the help of the Pocket Factory. They have developed proprietary concepts and are constantly broadening their perspective to find new ways to save energy. Often, specific occasions or sudden high energy losses require monitoring and optimization of consumption through data analysis.
It can be worthwhile to take a look at power consumption, because often even small changes are enough to reduce resource requirements and thus costs. The savings potential for power may not be as high compared to other media, but it creates an awareness of where and to what extent further energy can be saved.
As an IIoT - platform provider, we can support the customer in monitoring consumption. Digitized production makes it possible to collect data at every machine and to generate the key figures required for energy reduction via a dashboard and to visualize them accordingly.
Initial situation
Data had already been collected for power consumption in production. Detailed analysis identified potential savings in the following scenarios:
What was done
First, power consumption was monitored during non-production periods, such as weekends, or after the end of a shift. Often, the machines were put into a waiting mode after the end of the shift. This resulted in the machines consuming a constant amount of power during the non-production time. So the shift supervisors consistently made sure, especially on weekends, to switch off the machines, or put them into an energy-saving mode.
Furthermore, in the case of heat-intensive machines, they took a close look at how much power was being consumed. Appropriately lowering the heating temperature noticeably reduced the amount of electricity required.
Secondly, the power consumption per product produced was examined. After evaluation and presentation in dashboards, certain products showed higher consumption during production than others. Here, the causes for this were investigated. For example, changeover times and cleaning times were monitored to find potential savings.
Results
Overall, power consumption was reduced through even small interventions. The savings were in the mid four-digit euro range.
In addition, the monitoring of power consumption provided new insights into plant behavior. The consumption per product manufactured was set up for cross-plant monitoring in order to identify efficiency losses between the individual plants.
The age of the lines also plays a role. Based on the results obtained, it makes sense to think about modernizing individual machines, because excessively high power consumption can be an indicator of this.
Conclusion
It always makes sense to strive for energy savings. Even small measures help to conserve resources. Data collection, such as here on power consumption, aids the plant manager to improve production processes.
The effects of the implemented changes could be seen after just a few days. Power consumption had decreased measurably as a result of the actions taken.