Application of systems simulation for predicting and optimizing energy requirements for a HDF moulded door skin manufacturing production plant

In today’s straggling economy, manufacturing companies make a great effort to\ud maintain their competitive advantage. Daily they face challenges o f improving\ud efficiency and reducing cost. In order to survive in this rough environment, tough\ud decisions need to be taken. The major challenge that most manufacturing companies\ud face consists in reducing their energy consumption, as this represents one o f their\ud major costs. The highly automated production plants are usually equipped with the\ud latest energy monitoring systems which capture the energy consumption throughout\ud the entire company. These systems produce high quantities o f data that most o f the\ud time is very difficult and costly to analyse. This is the first major challenge\ud companies face. Looking at this data, the plants’ engineers can get a rough\ud understanding o f where the major energy losses occur and they can come up with\ud solutions. The next tough challenge consists in calculating the return on each project\ud that can be implemented. This requires an in depth analysis that takes time and\ud money to perform. Simulation is one o f the technologies that can represent a solution\ud to these problems.\ud Even though simulation has been used so far in manufacturing facilities for\ud modelling supply chain management, production management and business\ud processes, its applications in managing the energy consumption within\ud manufacturing companies represents a new and innovative research domain. This\ud prompted the research undertaken for the present thesis. The main focus o f this\ud research is to analyse production management in a manufacturing facility and\ud correlate it with the energy consumption. The research initially concentrates on\ud different simulation methodologies and their application in the current\ud manufacturing space. Literature relating to the correlation o f energy consumption\ud with production management has also been reviewed. This review identified very\ud few previous instances o f where simulation tools where used to predict the energy\ud consumption in a manufacturing facility. This research brings a novel approach to\ud investigating the adaptability o f industrial simulation processes and tools for\ud modelling the energy consumption with respect to a variable production output. The\ud end result o f this process consists in a better understanding o f the production system\ud and the energy loses which were incorporated in the simulation model.\ud The simulation model was validated using real world data collected from Masonite -\ud the case study company. This was closely followed by the creation o f different\ud scenarios that were analysed and which predicted a lowering in the energy\ud consumption that could reach over 9%

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation