Manufacturing scheduling for high energy efficiency and low carbon emission

Given mounting concerns related to climate change, manufacturing enterprises are facing growing pressure to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint. This pressure will become even more significant in the future due to the increasing cost of energy, resulting from both likely taxes and regulations related to carbon emissions. In addition to efforts on developing energy-efficient machines and processes, system-level approaches e.g. manufacturing scheduling may be more cost effective. Historically manufacturing scheduling has emphasized productivity; in almost all cases, energy and environmental factors have not been considered. This talk starts with a mathematical programming model of the flow shop scheduling problem that consider peak power load, energy consumption, and associated carbon footprint in addition to cycle time. Scheduling approaches under different rate structures and for collaborative and non-collaborative factories are then discussed. Toward the end, operational optimization of a grid-connected factory with onsite renewable energy generation and storage is explored.