Energy engineering in the virtual factory

Energy engineering is an emerging topic in manufacturing plants due to environmental and economic reasons. It is not enough to save energy during the utilization of products, but the production should be considered as well. Moreover, idle times during production should be taken into account by switching the systems and the subsystems into modes that require less energy inputs. Furthermore energy related properties should be considered as early-as-possible in the plant process development, because in this phase the influence on the later energy consumption is considerable. Hence, methods for energy optimization in production are combined with virtual plant engineering to consider energy aspects as early as possible in plant design. Both engineering domains contribute to an integrated process for energy engineering in the virtual factory.