1
Introduction
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old
problems from a new angle re-quires a creative
imagination and marks the real advances in science.”
Albert Einstein
1.1
Initial Situation and Problem Definition
The importance of the energy and commodity markets has steadily increased since
the first oil crisis in the 1970s. A price increase of nearly 80% for fossil fuels
from 2000 to 2014 as well as debates on climate change and the exploitation of
finite resources have triggered a mind change among politicians, entrepreneurs,
and scientists [DLR2004, p. 3; St2014, p. 1]. The sustained use of energy and
other resources has become a basic requirement for a company to competitively
perform on the market.
Based on the energy management as well as energy data acquisition systems,
companies nowadays record energy data and try to increase their performance
in the course of their continuous improvement processes. “A systematic analysis
of materials and energy flows indicates significant potential savings for process
integration, heat pumps, and cogeneration” [Jo+2012, p. 48]. The design of production processes therefore requires not only the consideration of logistical and
technical production conditions but also the consistent optimization of resource
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter
(https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32971-6_1) contains supplementary material, which is
available to authorized users.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH,
part of Springer Nature 2021
A. C. Römer, Simulation-based Optimization of Energy Efficiency in Production,
Forschung zur Digitalisierung der Wirtschaft | Advanced Studies
in Business Digitization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32971-6_1
1
Introduction
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old
problems from a new angle re-quires a creative
imagination and marks the real advances in science.”
Albert Einstein
1.1
Initial Situation and Problem Definition
The importance of the energy and commodity markets has steadily increased since
the first oil crisis in the 1970s. A price increase of nearly 80% for fossil fuels
from 2000 to 2014 as well as debates on climate change and the exploitation of
finite resources have triggered a mind change among politicians, entrepreneurs,
and scientists [DLR2004, p. 3; St2014, p. 1]. The sustained use of energy and
other resources has become a basic requirement for a company to competitively
perform on the market.
Based on the energy management as well as energy data acquisition systems,
companies nowadays record energy data and try to increase their performance
in the course of their continuous improvement processes. “A systematic analysis
of materials and energy flows indicates significant potential savings for process
integration, heat pumps, and cogeneration” [Jo+2012, p. 48]. The design of production processes therefore requires not only the consideration of logistical and
technical production conditions but also the consistent optimization of resource
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter
(https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32971-6_1) contains supplementary material, which is
available to authorized users.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH,
part of Springer Nature 2021
A. C. Römer, Simulation-based Optimization of Energy Efficiency in Production,
Forschung zur Digitalisierung der Wirtschaft | Advanced Studies
in Business Digitization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32971-6_1
1