Fuzzy decision of machine switch on-off for energy efficient operation of manufacturing system

In a manufacturing system, the machines have many idle statuses which consumed large quantity energy but with non-value added activities. Real time idle status control is important and challenging for the energy efficient manufacturing. With the sensible ability improved, more and more data can be collected from the manufacturing system. A fuzzy decision method is proposed to decrease the idle status by switching on-off the machine based on the real time data of the system. The serial manufacturing system is decomposed to basic control modules. A fuzzy controller with a fuzzy logic model and an on-off decision model is design based on the real time data of buffers and machines in order to switch the machine status. The fuzzy rules are described by analyzing the decision intention according to the human knowledge. After a series of simulation experiments, it has been observed that the proposed approach can be a simple, practical way to energy saving operation with accepted throughput loss.