SOUTHFIELD, MI—New software from Dürr Systems Inc. can give manufacturers an overview of their consumption of energy, water and other resources across the entire production facility.

The ISO 50001-certified software, DXQenergy.management, enables facility managers to quickly identify the primary consumers of energy and other resources at the plant level. What are a factory’s electricity consumption trends? How much solvent does each workpiece require? Has there been a noticeable increase in water consumption? Plant managers need answers to these and many other questions—especially in energy-intensive sectors like car manufacturing—to reduce energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, and operating costs. Dürr’s software displays this data in clearly arranged dashboards. Various views are available to quickly see consumption of gas, electricity, water, paint or solvent for the entire plant or select areas, such individual process lines. 

DXQenergy.management continuously monitors the data recorded by various sensors and saves this data in a central location. Pure consumption values, such as the electricity consumed by robots, are of limited use for analyzing and optimizing the energy efficiency of machines and processes. DXQenergy.management combines consumption and production values to provide insightful figures, such as electricity consumption per vehicle body produced.

A central consumption cockpit, which includes individual gauges for energy and resources, allows plant managers to comprehensively evaluate data. For example, hot water can be displayed in liters to compare consumption during different periods. Current consumption values can also be compared with an earlier one, or a defined nominal value. Alternatively, hot water can be specified in kilowatt-hours to represent the energy required for heating. 

Consumption figures can be represented in various units and for different periods for each type of resource and each process area up to the sensor level. Thus, managers can see if everything is running in a “green” zone or if one specific consumption item is too high, as signaled by a red indicator. They can then identify the primary consumers at the plant level and, thanks to the detailed evaluation, locate exactly where resources are being wasted.

Automatically switching all systems along the entire process chain reduces energy consumption and manual effort. This function stores operational work time models so that the machines switch on automatically in good time before work begins, are scaled down during break times, and are reliably switched off at the end of the workday. Manual intervention is still possible if unplanned changes occur.

DXQenergy.management is suitable for all industry sectors and can be retrofitted to existing plants with network-compatible sensors. 

For more information, click www.durr.com.