A holistic framework for increasing energy and resource efficiency in manufacturing

The derivation of promising measures to improve energy and resource efficiency demands an integrated, system-oriented perspective in order to avoid conflicts of goals and problem shifting. This involves an extended understanding of production processes, process chains and factories, including all relevant inputand output flows and their dynamic consumption respectively emission patterns. Against this background the topic energy and resource efficiency calls for different fields of action which are presented within this paper: based on different measurement strategies, the deep understanding of single processes and interdependencies within process chains as well as suitable methods for the evaluation and prediction of energy or resource consumption patterns (e.g. through energy oriented simulation), it is finally a major goal to integrate energy-related key figures into conventional industrial decision support systems within production management.