Enabling green manufacturing using Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) technology

This paper presents how to model and implement green planning approaches in manufacturing environments using Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) technology. The paper takes a starting point in a case study aiming to bring forward environmental impacts as a decision factor in production planning and control by enabling companies to pick a plan where environmental impact factors are integrated in the planning environment. The companies involved in the project are two Danish process industries and manufacturer of mass customized products. Based on extensive data collection and developed simulation models, new methods of optimizing resources in the manufacturing are tested including factors such as machine allocation, batch sizes, sequences, and product mix. The tree main factors in assessing the environmental impact have been waste, energy, and emission. The latter has been calculated based on energy consumption and the type of energy source. Especially the need to involve human decision making to obtain a satisfactory plan, points towards Cogninive Infocommunication, mainly due to the complex nature of the production and supply chain planning that have proven difficult to model.x