Investigating the relationship between energy consumption and overall equipment effectiveness for improving manufacturing systems' productivity: an application in the thermoforming process

In the last decades, energy efficiency of production systems has become a key concern in several industry fields, due to the increased energy costs and the associated environmental impacts. Since research and development effort across all industries are driven by the goal of improving the productivity of industrial process, many authors investigated on the relation between energy consumption and production level. In particular, previous studies use regression analysis to predict energy required by the system, through a monitoring and targeting approach. The present paper enriches over these techniques by developing a model that takes into account also the impact of single overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) losses on energy consumption. Our analysis provides a better understanding of a system energy efficiency, useful to achieve a more effective control and fostering a continuous improvement of manufacturing performance. The proposed approach, implemented for the analysis of a thermoforming process in a real plant, is applicable to any case where the energy necessary for the functioning of a production machinery is considerable compared to the whole plant consumption.