Machine control policies for energy saving in manufacturing

Energy saving in production plants is becoming more and more relevant due to the pressure from governments to contain the environmental impact of manufacturing, and from companies to reduce costs. This work deals with the problem of saving energy in single machines visited by singlepart type with stochastic interarrival times. Specifically, several control policies are proposed for switching the machine off when production is not critical, and on when the part flow has to be resumed. The policy parameter that minimizes the machine energy request is provided analytically for exponentially distributed arrival times, and numerically for general distributions. A numerical comparison with the most common practices in manufacturing is also reported, together with a real case analysis from the automotive sector. © 2013 IEEE.