Towards a framework for energy-aware information systems in manufacturing

Environmental concerns, stricter legislation and inflated energy costs, together yield energy efficiency as an important pillar for virtually every industrial sector. Mindful of this challenge, ISs can act as enablers of energy-based management and intelligent decision support. Based on empirical evidence through two case studies combined with the design of a system prototype, this paper identifies those major functionalities that suffice to characterize an IS as ‘energy-aware’ in manufacturing. The functionalities are classified into two broad categories: (a) energy monitoring and (b) energy-aware analytics and are then combined into a high-level architecture. As a prerequisite for deploying such functionalities, this research presents also an approach integrating energy and operational information flows. Beyond that, the technologies that support the real-time and large-scale handling of energy data are provided. Our effort scales up to introduce a generic framework of a case-independent energy-aware IS.