Energy-efficient control in multi-stage production lines with parallel machine workstations and production constraints
研究了多阶段生产线中利用缓冲区信息控制机器开关状态以降低能耗的方法，提出了精确模型和递归算法，实验验证了有效性。
Nowadays, the growing interest in industry for enhancing manufacturing processes sustainability is a major trend. One of the most supported strategies to increase the energy-efficiency of manufacturing activities is the control of machine state towards the optimum trade-off between production rate and energy demand. This method is referred to as energy-efficient control and it triggers machines in a standby state with low power request. In this article, multi-stage production lines composed of identical parallel machine workstations are the systems of interest, and the energy-efficient control policies make use of buffer level information. Each machine can be switched off instantaneously and switched on with a stochastic startup time. Problem objective is to minimize the energy demand while ensuring production constraints. This article proposes a novel approach to solve the problem at hand. An exact model for two-stage system is formulated using a Markov Decision Process to be solved with a linear programming methodology. A novel technique, namely the Backward-Recursive approach, is used to address systems with more than two stages. Numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.