Benchmarking Concept for Energy Efficiency in the Manufacturing Industry - A Holistic Energy Efficiency Model

Determination and comparison of the energy efficiency over all planning levels is one of the key challenges for small and mediums sized enterprises (SME). This is because there is a lack of transparency and information to identify the major energy consumers on plant level as well as on production and machine level. Therefore, there is a need to develop a holistic energy efficiency model which integrates all three planning levels supporting decision makers with the essential information. This paper presents first results from an ongoing benchmark study which is conducted with companies from Austria, Belgium and Germany. First results show, that there is a lack of information integration from the shop-floor to the planning levels which causes SMEs to fail their strategic energy efficiency targets.