Modelling, simulation and evaluation of energy consumptions for a manufacturing production line

The use of discrete event simulation integrated with energy consumption computation is nowadays very useful for the efficient design of an industrial production plant. In this paper a serial manufacturing line made by four operating machines has been modelled by means of SIMIO discrete event simulator, focusing on the production line energy consumption computation. Each operating machine has been described according to three different aspects. Firstly the mechanical behaviour, that is guaranteed from the simulator modelling functionalities itself. Secondly the control functionalities that have been designed by means of Finite State Machines (FSMs), then translated into the C# programming language and finally integrated into the SIMIO platform. Finally the energy consumptions, that have been computed by modelling the energy states associated to the different operating machine working functions. In the end a simulation experiment has been run and the regarding results have been presented. The power absorbed and the energy consumed from the whole plant and from each single machine have been compared in order to allow the discussion about possible actions to be taken in order to respect the maximum amount of energy supplied to the plant, value that often represents a primary economic constraints for the industrial plant management. Main limitations coming from the proposed work regard the missing of plant power and energy measurement and the level of approximation used to model the different machines energy consumption.