Analysis of an energy oriented switching control of production lines

The implementation of control strategies that reduce energy consumption during the machine idle periods is becoming a challenging goal to achieve energy efficiency in production systems. A general framework for switching the machine off! on has been recently proposed in literature for single machines. This paper studies the performance of a production line when a general policy is applied at machine level. The considered performance measures are the total energy consumed 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.