Factory modelling: combining energy modelling for buildings and production systems

Traditionally, manufacturing facilities and building services are analysed separately to manufacturing operations. This is despite manufacturing operations using and discarding energy with the support of facilities. 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 inter-related systems. The objectives are to improve overall resource efficiency and to exploit opportunities to use energy and / or 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 modelling approach and introduces the prototype IES Ltd THERM software. The work has been applied to industrial cases to demonstrate the ability of the prototype to support activities towards sustainable manufacturing.