Energy-Efficient Resource Scheduling of a Single Resource with Production Requirements: A Joint Simulation and Scenario-Based Mathematical Programming Approach

Improving energy efficiency in manufacturing yields significant cost and environmental benefits. Advanced data collection and execution technologies allow the implementation of data-driven dynamic control policies that turn on and off resources depending on the real-time data to save energy. Motivated by an automotive producer’s paint oven on-off scheduling, we consider a single resource that operates in on, off and warmup modes. When the resource is on, it can be turned off immediately. However, when the turned-off resource is turned on, there is a delay for warmup. The energy consumption in the off mode is the lowest.We present a scenario-based mathematical programming formulation to determine the optimal on-off schedule of a single resource that minimizes the average energy and early/late production costs while meeting the production requirements. We employ a cutting plane algorithm to solve this problem. We discuss using the scenario-based formulation with the random arrival times generated by a detailed digital twin of the production system feeding the resource.