Cut Energy Costs 23%

Solarsoft Business Systems officials state that their flagship manufacturing execution system, Solarsoft Mattec MES, now includes energy planning and monitoring functionality to assist manufacturers with energy management programs.

Operations and plant professionals commonly quip, “Avoid starting up all the big motors at one time.”

With today’s tough economic climate and pressure for sustainability, manufacturers in every industry find that it is not enough to follow yesterday’s impassive approach to energy consumption. Commercial utility rates often spike during tension periods of peak demand, and utility companies charge premium rates for high usage blocks. Energy is typically one of the top three costs in today’s manufacturing facility, and operations professionals believe that in the next three to five years it will become the number one plant expense.

Scheduling production and workload in a way that reduces the plant’s total power demand plus taking advantage of rate variations can translate to significant savings – in terms of total energy consumed and the actual cost per kilowatt-hour.

“We want to help manufacturers improve efficiency,” says Andy Amalfitano, general manager of Solarsoft’s manufacturing execution and intelligence division. “People think that only means making more product with the same resources. But, to Solarsoft it also means helping plants avoid paying peak prices for energy and reducing their overall energy consumption.”

Managing power consumption is largely site-specific, but the economic impact flows up to business results, and felt by the outbound supply chain. Manufacturers who use Solarsoft Mattec MES in conjunction with their energy management program: 

• Monitor and control energy consumption and understand the tradeoffs between idling machines, and shutting down and restarting later
• Eliminate unnecessary peak rate use by leveling energy consumption and planning sheddable loads according to lowest-rate periods
• Analyze energy use by machine, job, shift, product, or any other dimension
• Accurately capture the direct energy cost to produce any part or product, in order to set prices, accurately determine which machine uses the least energy to produce any given part
• Understand the energy cost associated with uptime versus downtime for better maintenance planning
• Control quality in context of energy consumption for machines that are pre-heated or have variable heat settings based on product made