Gamification of Resource Consumption Monitoring of Products and Machines: A Cross-Platform and User-Friendly Approach

The resource consumption of products and production processes, regarding energy and material, is the most important parameter in assessing economic and ecological sustainability. Existing approaches for measuring resource consumption calculate key performance indicators, such as the carbon footprint, from which actions can be derived. The data acquisition, processing, and visualization are usually complex and individually adapted to the products and production machines. This paper presents a method to capture the resource consumption of a product and production machine with low effort and in a targeted manner to calculate the carbon footprint subsequently. The approach's novelty lies in linking any sensor technology with a cross-platform application, integrating existing data sets, and incorporating gamification techniques. Gamifying the process, users engage more with the data, leading to higher awareness and deeper insights. The application offers an intuitive user interface displaying resource consumption by calculating the environmental impact of the production. The live data integration allows for immediate monitoring of the effect of adaptions to the production process, that helps to create a better understanding of contributions to resource consumption. The use of the application is highlighted in a case study of industrial complexity.