Improved energy-efficient production using discrete event simulation

There is currently considerable debate concerning increasing energy prices. For Swedish industry electricity prices have increased rapidly during the last 6 years, roughly doubling the cost. This situation has been the catalyst for significant increases in energy research and the research work presented in this paper is part of this growing body. The paper reports an approach to analyse and reduce energy use within energy-intensive industry, whereby a Swedish iron foundry is used as a test case. The results show that by using a customized simulation model a company can lower its overall energy costs through improved planning of the production process. The method formulated enables the disaggregating of energy parameters into groupings and provides examples of how the simulation model can be realized in order to account for energy usage. Different aspects of energy and power usage as well as the corresponding costs are analysed.