Investigation of advanced energy saving stand by strategies for production systems

Switching machinery into standby during non-productive phases for saving energy is rarely applied in today's production environments. Frequent reasons for this are lack of information on potential benefits and the uncertainty on resulting, potentially negative effects. Thus, in a recent project an approach for investigating both economical and ecological benefits was developed, integrating a facile definition process of possible standby modes and basic production system simulation for investigation of different switching strategies. The results of this estimation are evaluated both economically and ecologically, providing a clear decision base for strategy selection. In this paper, the approach is introduced along with exemplary results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V.