Management information system for energy and environmental aspects of small and medium scale industries

Traditionally small and medium scale industries (SMIs) have concentrated on physical resources but have often neglected the effective management information, though realisation of its importance is now growing. This requires fast and accurate computation and manipulation of huge amount of data. Information system can be used for energy and environmental planning and to reduce the energy wastage and environmental pollution. SMI's in India mostly cater the domestic market and use local sources. These industries are mostly labour intensive. Managerial and entrepreneurial skills are less, with limited access to information and financial sources. These limitations make it difficult for SMIs to upgrade their technologies and allocate their resources efficiently. This work examines possible implementation of information system based energy and environmental management system in selected SMIs. Some of the important factors identified to develop a model for this system are energy consumption, energy standards (benchmarks), emission generation, environmental standards and production details for various sections in a foundry. The application case study to highlight the benefits of energy and environment technology option for foundry is described in this paper.