191 research outputs found
V. Cesarotti, G. Mummolo, L. Ranieri Allocazione ottimale delle risorse finanziarie e configurazione impiantistica nella redazione di piani d’ambito (parte II)
No full text
Using simulation to study the influence of Overall Equipment Effectiveness on energy consumption of a single production machine
No full textIn recent years, manufacturing companies have been forced to focus their attention on the effective and efficient use of energy, partly due to the huge and continuous increase of energy costs, and partly due to the enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. However, efforts made to pursue energy efficiency have proved themselves to be highly remunerative in more than one way, as recent studies have demonstrated that they often end up in additional benefits, such as operational efficiency increases. Furthermore, other investigations have suggested the existence of a tight relation between Overall Equipment Effectiveness losses and energy consumption, so that actions taken to reduce the firsts may have consequences on the second, a condition that shall be taken into account while evaluating their feasibility and priority. In order to deeply analyse such mutual influence, a simulation model to evaluate and estimate system efficiency losses, meaning both Overall Equipment Effectiveness losses and energy efficiency losses of a single production machine has been created, and is presented as a first step towards the definition of a more extended model that will consider the behaviour of a whole production line and allow the creation of new Operations and Maintenance policies and practices based on energy efficiency considerations. This work turns out to be highly innovative from a scientific point of view, given the scarceness and incompleteness, both in commercial and academic literature, of simulation models considering energy and/or environmental aspects of manufacturing systems, and the limited number of simulation models considering them in conjunction with Overall Equipment Effectiveness. In addition, it can be also particularly useful for practitioners, helping to develop general awareness of the criticality of energy efficiency in any aspect of production systems and to start considering and handling it as a key parameter to drive Operations and Maintenance decisions
Measuring and improving manufacturing plant performances: development and dissemination of a customized model for the italian industrial laundry sector
No full textWithin the Italian Industrial Laundry sector we are assisting to an outstanding industrialization process towed by the increase in technology and automation of machineries. This breakthrough highlights the need for an increase and a dissemination of industrial culture within the laundries. This paper concern the realization of a research project that aims to the define and spread a plant performance measurement and analysis system as a standard for the entire Italian Laundry Sector. In first the first part of the paper Authors will shortly describe the features of the proposed system. The second part of the paper will focus on the dissemination process, necessary to ensure the establishment of the proposed system and the increasing of the industrial culture within the sector
Increasing availability of production flow lines through optimal buffer sizing: a simulative study
No full textIn flow shop highly automated production lines the absence or undersize of inter-operational buffer between consecutive stations is an occurrence as frequent as detrimental for the productivity of the entire production line. A correct sizing of buffers mitigates or even eliminates the propagation, on the entire production line, of small inefficiencies due to stops and / or slowdowns of the single station. This paper describes a simulation approach to investigate the effect buffer between two successive stations and measure its effects in terms of change in the overall efficiency of the line. A wide range of typical production parameter is considered. This allows to extend the paper results to many different production system and to evidence some interesting analogies in production effectiveness behavior depending on buffer size. The introduction of an analytic experimental relation allows to describe the evidenced behavior and to size the buffer without need for further simulations
Improving Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing Systems — Literature Review and Analysis of the Impact on the Energy Network of Consolidated Practices and Upcoming Opportunities
No full textGlobal energy context has become more and more complex in the last decades: raising prices of depleting fossil fuels, together with economic crisis and new international environmental and energy policies, are forcing companies (and manufacturing industry in particular, which is responsible for 90% of industry energy consumptions, in turn making up the 51% of global energy usage, as listed on EIA, the Energy International Agency, website, last accessed on the 5th of October 2014) to cut energy wastes and inefficiencies, and to control their consumptions.
Besides the existing analysis of the above mentioned regulatory and economic concerns, Energy Efficiency criticality for manufacturing systems has recently been investigated and proved also by the analysis of its connection with Productivity Efficiency [1-4], which resulted to be strong and mutual, and of the numerous non-energy benefits achieved while performing energy efficiency measures [5], such as the improvement of corporate image and the environmental impact reduction.
Over most recent years, Energy Efficiency has therefore become a critical factor for industrial plants’ competitiveness, and is now definitely considered as a key driver to economic development and sustainability.
But, despite it all, it is often still difficult for many companies to understand its effectiveness, in good part because of the difficulties met in focusing its technical and economic benefits, as Laitner [6] highlights:
“Energy Efficiency has been an invisible resource. Unlike a new power plant or a new oil well, we do not see energy efficiency at work. (...) energy efficiency may be thought of as the cost-effective investments in the energy we do not use either to produce a certain amount of goods and services within the economy.”
As a matter of fact, Energy Efficiency still represents a challenging goal for most companies. As above mentioned, numerous problems are yet to overcome in quantifying its benefits and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of related investments, and most of all the huge variety, complexity and changeability of fields, technologies and methodologies involved in its improvement in production systems are responsible for the slowing down of their resolution and of the spread of Energy Efficiency measures and culture.
In fact, in order to individuate and prioritize suitable improvement interventions and Energy Efficiency opportunities, and to design and customize the Energy Management System or the Monitoring and Control System according to a particular company’s needs, a deep and complete knowledge of many different subjects and disciplines (ranging from physics and thermodynamics to economy and project management) is needed, besides a good ability and practical sensibility to direct one’s efforts in the right way.
Considering that Energy Efficiency isn’t obviously the core business of manufacturing industry, such effort might sometimes be very laborious, and in recent years many companies have decided to demand Energy Management activities to specialized external companies, the so-called Energy Service Companies (ESCos). ESCos generally own the know-how required to individuate Energy Efficiency measures and are also able to fund Energy Efficiency investments (see [7] for a specific literature review); what they usually do not own is a deep understanding of the company’s dynamics, situations and needs, as well as the capability to draw a long-term development path towards the achievement of a diffused Energy Efficiency culture within the company, which shall be consistent with the company’s vision and policies and is essential in order to consolidate and continuously upgrade improvements in such sector. It is then crucial for companies to have at least a general consciousness of all intervention areas and of all possible improvements, both managerial (and/or behavioural) and technological, that could be pursued and achieved, in order to be able to lead their own way towards their sustainable development, and also to capitalize ESCOs’ assistance and services.
In order to overcome part of these difficulties, and in particular to make it easier for companies to address their efforts and catch best efficiency opportunities, a logical and systemic approach is necessary: it would help not to overlook any possible area of improvement, to easily classify and understand those areas, but also to identify the most suitable and cost-effective, and eventually to prioritize them.
In the light of this, some studies have already been conducted in order to find out methods and tools to assess the current level of maturity of a company in the Energy Management field [8], and to help individuating a possible development path. However, although they point out some possible development scenarios, they do not provide a complete and organic categorization of all possible areas of intervention, so as to make it easier for practitioners to address their efforts into the right way.
In this chapter, a new conceptual scheme to organize and classify Energy Efficiency measures is defined, leading from the definition of Energy Cost per Product Unit and further breaking it up in order to identify and define all possible areas of intervention, providing for each of them a brief overview of possible measures and opportunities and a specific literature review. All scientific papers, books and technical papers considered for the literature review of each area (chosen on the basis of a wide literature research and on authors’ on-field experience) are recalled and systematized in Table 1, so that the reader is guided through their examination and rapidly addressed to their consultation.
In addition, a qualitative evaluation of the impact of some possible Energy Efficiency measures from each area on the energy network is given, in order to give both practitioners and researchers a first input to further focus on this additional feasibility evaluation criteria for Energy Efficiency measures, which enables to evaluate them on a national or international level rather than considering the benefits or concerns belonging to a single company
A systemic approach to achieve operational excellence in hotel services
No full textPurpose: The purpose of the framework here proposed is to introduce an industrial culture within the service organizations. Concepts such as employees empowerment, ownership, continuous improvement, together with the systematic implementation of quantitative methods builds the organizational basis for achieving operational excellence in services, reducing costs and increasing service quality. This has been deployed in two phases: a “hard” phase to support the design of the service and the construction of tangible and intangible elements of the service, and a “soft” phase to support the management, maintenance and improvement of the service delivery. All this has been applied to the hotel service sector where the interaction between tangible and intangible elements of the service are particularly evident.
Methodology/approach: The framework uses and integrates several methodologies. Quality Function Deployment is largely used in order to support the “hard” phase of the framework. Kano’s model of customer requirements has been integrated in the Quality Function Deployment structure by means of an original method developed by the authors, introducing a so-called Non-Quality Priority Number (similar to the FMEA’s Risk Priority Number) that in combination with a so-called Quality Priority Number drives the decisions for improvement towards operational excellence. Moreover the “soft” phase of the framework introduces methods such as Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Total Productive Maintenance in order to improve the service organization’s operational competence and culture, increasing at the same time the sense of ownership and the commitment for improvement of front line workers.
Findings: Through this paper it has been shown that industrial methods for operational excellence can be adapted and transferred to the service sector with a potential for significant improvements in particular for those services with a high degree of tangible factors. Allowing in this way to achieve outstanding results also without significant investments.
Research limitations/implications: This paper does not have the intention of describing the state of the art of service design and management, but rather it focuses on the transfer of industrial methods and techniques to the service sector.
Originality/value: The value of this paper is related to proposal of a global systemic approach to operational excellence in services, by means of which industrial methods for operational excellence are transferred to the service sector. Only few works in literature have tried to transfer industrial methods for operational excellence to services, however the main value of this paper is not – or not only – in the specific methods proposed, but in their integration in the systemic approach.
Keywords: Service operational excellence, Quality Function Deployment, Total Productive Maintenance, FMEA, commitment and empowerment, industrial culture transfer.
Paper type: Research Paper
Energy budget control in manufacturing systems with on-site energy generation: an advanced methodology for analyzing specific cost variations
No full textIn light of the growing competitiveness in global economy and the raising energy prices, energy budget management is an increasingly critical aspect for manufacturing companies. However, the analysis of the energy budget variation over time can be challenging due to numerous parameters affecting specific energy cost and energy consumption. The present study falls within the context of various works in literature concerning energy budget control and has the purpose of focusing the analysis on complex manufacturing systems including an on-site energy generation plant. In this case, the contributions of energy produced on-site, purchased and sold will contribute to the definition of the specific energy cost, which will be in turn influenced by several factors such as market prices of the resources (electricity, fossil fuel), specific characteristics of consumption (quantity and load synchronization), efficiency of the production system. In order to implement a comprehensive control of the energy budget, the difference between the predicted values and the real ones (budget variations) should be broken down into various components. This work proposes a methodology to decompose budget variations, defining a series of indicators at different levels associated to the single components influencing the variation itself, thus enabling the identification of the specific causes. This methodology has been developed in response to the demand of a specific company but can also be applied to others with similar configurations, given the interest recently aroused in this topic. Its application in an industrial context is then presented. The result of this work is the definition of a system of indicators allowing the identification of the different causes of the budget variance. The clear attribution of such deviations to different responsibility centers is enabled by the identification of a set of parameters to keep under control, hence supporting the company in the definition of timely countermeasures
The quality chain: a total quality approach to external and internal supply chain management
No full textThe quality chain: a total quality approach to external and internal supply chain management
No full text- …
