Analysis of Production Lines with Switch-Off/On Controlled Machines

The implementation of control strategies that reduce energy demand during the machine idle periods is becoming a challenging goal to achieve energy efficiency in production systems. A general policy for switching the machine off/on has been recently proposed in the literature for single machines when a transitory is needed to resume the service. This work analyzes the performance of a production line when a control policy is applied at machine level. In more details, the control of one machine at the time and the control of all machines simultaneously are compared. The considered performance measures are the total energy demanded per part and the system throughput. Numerical results are based on discrete event simulation, and a comparison with the most common practices in manufacturing is also reported.