Energy consumption evaluation for sustainable manufacturing: A feature-based approach

Energy efficiency has been recognised as one of the key issues in achieving sustainable manufacturing. The first step towards energy efficiency is to develop an effective approach in understanding and characterising energy consumption of a manufacturing system. Existing methods to model energy consumption are reviewed in three levels, machine level, process level, and factory level. The reviewed studies mainly focused on energy consumption in the machining stage. As a result, the existing energy models can only be used within a limited scope. Feature technology is introduced in this paper, to evaluate energy consumption, as feature is viewed as a suitable vehicle to transfer energy data between product design process and the subsequent applications. The feature-based approach proposed here supports feature-based design, process planning, analysis, and feature-based machining. Therefore, sustainable manufacturing is enhanced in a more intelligent manner. The advantages and limitations of the feature-based approach are investigated, compared with the existing operation-based approaches. Data required in this feature-based approach is summarised and depicted in respect to data sources in different machining stages. Moreover, a confidence-level-associated energy evaluation schema is proposed to help users in interpreting energy estimation results. Conclusions and future work is given at the end.