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The utilization of advanced industrial informatics, such as industrial internet of things and cyber-physical system (CPS), provides enhanced situation awareness and resource controllability, which are essential for flexible real-time production scheduling and control (SC). Regardless of the belief that applying these advanced technologies under electricity demand response can help alleviate electricity demand–supply mismatches and eventually improve manufacturing sustainability, significant barriers have to be overcome first. Particularly, most existing real-time SC strategies remain limited to short-term scheduling and are unsuitable for finding the optimal schedule under demand response scheme, where a long-term production scheduling is often required to determine the energy consumption shift from peak to off-peak hours. Moreover, SC strategies ensuring the desired production throughput under dynamic electricity pricing and uncertainties in manufacturing environment are largely lacking. In this research, a knowledge-aided real-time demand response strategy for CPS-enabled manufacturing systems is proposed to address the above challenges. A knowledge-aided analytical model is first applied to generate a long-term production schedule to aid the real-time control under demand response. In addition, a real-time optimization model is developed to reduce electricity costs for CPS-enabled manufacturing systems under uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is validated through the case study on a steel powder manufacturing system. The results indicate the exceptional performance of the proposed strategy as compared to other real-time SC strategies, leading to a reduction of electricity cost up to 35.6% without sacrificing the production throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circular economy plays an important role in energy-intensive industries, aiming to contribute to ethical sustainable societal development. Energy demand response is a key actor for cleaner production and circular economy strategy. In the Industry 4.0 context, the advanced technologies (e.g. cloud computing, Internet of things, cyber-physical system, digital twin and big data analytics) provide numerous opportunities for the implementation of a cleaner production strategy and the development of intelligent manufacturing. This paper presented a framework of data-driven sustainable intelligent/smart manufacturing based on demand response for energy-intensive industries. The technological architecture was designed to implement the proposed framework, and multi-level demand response models were developed based on machine, shop-floor and factory to save energy cost. Finally, an application of ball mills in a slurry shop-floor of a partner company was presented to demonstrate the proposed framework and models. Results showed that the energy efficiency of ball mills can be greatly improved. The energy cost of the slurry shop-floor saved approximately 19.33% by considering electricity demand response using particle swarm optimisation. This study provides a practical approach to make effective and energy-efficient decisions for energy-intensive manufacturing enterprises. • A framework of data-driven sustainable intelligent manufacturing is proposed. • The framework is to achieve a circular economy for energy-intensive industries. • Multi-level demand response models based on PSO are developed to save energy costs. • The framework and models can benefit the environment, economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new model of integrated manufacturing and material handling system is proposed. • The implications of fast charging on electricity demand are investigated. • Optimal schedules to reduce energy cost under production constraints are obtained. • The proposed demand response strategy can save up to 14.2% of the energy cost. Electricity demand response is proved to be a viable approach to address the peak demand, improve the power grid reliability, and facilitate the grid integration of renewable resources. The implementation of demand response management in the manufacturing sector, which is one of the main energy consumers, has received significant attention. The existing studies in this field have traditionally focused on maximizing the benefits of demand response through machine control and scheduling. However, due to the widespread adoption of fast-charging infrastructure for material handling equipment (MHE), the high-power demand of fast charging and the close coordination between the machines and MHE pose much-increased complexity in the energy management, which necessitates a more comprehensive demand response scheduling method for the integrated manufacturing and material handling system. In this study, an analytical manufacturing and material handling system model is proposed to obtain cost-effective production schedules under demand response. The interactions between machines and MHE, production throughput requirement, battery charging characteristic, and time-varying electricity pricing are jointly considered in the integrated model to help manufacturers reap substantial benefits of demand response. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through numerical case studies, where the results indicate a 15.1% energy cost reduction compared to the benchmark scheduling scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]