The goal of saving the planet is noble (and necessary). However, most manufacturers are more immediately concerned with saving money. If you’re looking to save on costs through energy management, ultimately you need to turn energy insights into cost savings. Below we run through some specific examples of how to drive savings and win more business by leveraging an EMS. If you’d like to learn more about Energy Management Systems in general, see our Complete Guide to Energy Management Systems. If you’re looking to learn more about energy efficiency in manufacturing overall, see our Complete Guide to Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing.
How to Use an Energy Management System to Save Money
One of the primary purposes of an Energy Management System is to drive savings. See below examples of how to leverage an EMS to realise savings on your factory floor.
Reduce Downtime Energy Costs
Identify periods when machines are running idle or at reduced capacity. This data can help you optimize machine utilization by either consolidating operations or shutting down machines during low-demand periods (if practical to do so).
Shift Loads
First, use your EMS to identify your most and least energy-intensive processes and production runs. Once established, assess options to re-schedule production runs, moving energy-intensive processes to run at off-peak hours. In addition, consider including maintenance experts during energy-intensive production runs, to guard against downtime during these expensive periods.
Predictive Maintenance
As mentioned previously, you can use energy loads as an indicator for predictive maintenance. Energy Management Systems can help you monitor the energy loads used by different machines, and identify when machines are using more energy than normal. Technicians can then address the machines to look for machine faults before they develop into issues. An increase in KWh used to produce a unit of a given product can indicate that an energy-intensive machine component (e.g., motor, coolant pump) needs to be serviced or replaced. Industry examples uncover machines that in some cases are using 30% more energy than their expected level.
Minimising Total Energy Overhead
You can use an Energy Management Systems to identify benchmarks for machine performance, by measuring the amount of energy required to complete a given task. Having an accurate read of energy requirements can help you ensure minimisation of total overhead energy costs. Establishing accurate benchmarks also helps provide accurate job quotes, protect against energy price fluctuations, and justify job price increases.
How to use an EMS to Win Business through Lower Pricing
Another way to drive profitability through use of an EMS is to use the EMS to help you offer lower pricing. Energy is always one of the most expensive inputs in a manufacturing process. Energy is also the riskiest input, as energy has the greatest price volatility. Given this volatiliy, it stands to reason that manufacturers give themselves a bit of extra padding in pricing quotes. Padding the end price of a manufacturing job is one way to reduce risks that volatile energy costs bring. However, the strategy of adding padding to a pricing quote also carries a significant downside: Manufacturers that have a more accurate way of predicting energy prices can offer lower prices. Mavarick makes use of artificial intelligence in its EMS, which helps reliably and accurately predict energy input costs through supervised machine learning techniques. Mavarick’s EMS can provide these energy draw estimates down to the sub-asset level, giving manufacturers unsurpassed levels of predictive ability for energy input pricing. With granular, accurate energy draw estimates, manufacturers can offer end-customers the lowest prices – while ensuring to protect their profit margins. Mavarick EMS customers can use accurate costing & pricing to establish a competitive edge. On the other hand – Mavarick users can also protect their business from jobs that will not provide the profitability they need to thrive. Talk to Mavarick today to learn how our Energy Management system can help you drive savings and win more business.
