Energy consumption in relation with buffer design during the pre-build stages of manufacturing system

Abstract

Most machines in an assembly line are not working on equal cycle times, therefore, the power consumption rating could be of interest, if a buffer is present, eliminated, oversized or undersized during the conception phase. Such pre build analysis is made with the help of emulation of machine in virtual engineering environment. The available useful engineering data, from the virtual environment can be used in a planning and decision support tool such as discrete event simulation. Moreover, machine control is enabled to accommodate the variations in production demands, particularly for the energy consumption when it is physically available on the shop floor. A method is suggested to rate the machine in virtual engineering and then fine tune the cycle time in discrete event simulation to articulate the inventory within the mutually deployed stations. The method has been practically applied and tested in an automotive case successfully.