Improving energy efficiency in service-oriented production automation systems

Production simulation systems play an ever more important role in the design of the production process in modern factory systems. The increasingly energy-starved economies of scale are pushing manufacturers towards progressively more sophisticated solutions to tackle the problem of energy efficiency in production. This paper looks at a modern state-of-the-art production simulation system currently in use at the Ford Motor Company, and discusses its benefits and drawbacks, while suggesting a way forward in these types of systems using SoA-based technologies.