Energy Consumption Reduction in Serial Production Lines via Controlled Machine Startup

Research efforts for energy consumption reduction in manufacturing systems have been centered at technology and process innovation. These projects, however, often involve major capital investment of new equipment and material. In this paper, we explore energy saving opportunities through improvement in factory floor operations. Specifically, in the framework of Bernoulli serial lines, we consider production systems with stripping operations. In such systems, the in-process buffers have to be depleted at the end of each shift to avoid quality deterioration during off-shift periods. Transient analysis of the systems are carried out and formulas to calculate the performance measures are derived. In addition, we investigate the effect of machine startup schedule on the system performances and develop optimal startup schedule which, as shown in the paper, can lead to significant improvement in energy utilization efficiency.