Resource Consumption Calculation Tool to Enhance Efficiency in Production Processes

Today overall price of a production process, in particular the price of resources, energy and labour, is increasing. This affects the whole European industry, especially tool-makers, their suppliers and customers. The development jeopardizes their competitiveness against those industries from low-wage countries and increases the importance of recycling. This has an impact on both tool-makers and producers, since tools are an integral element in every production system. Thus the tool industry’s efficiency needs to be improved to meet future challenges. While there are many approaches to optimizing resource management in general, none of them particularly regards tools, thus leaving their tremendous potential untapped. To provide competitiveness in the international field of tooling, there are four major scopes to improve: Development, toolmaking process, application and recycling. To this end, WZL Aachen, Germany and its research partner IFT Vienna, Austria are developing a Resource Consumption Calculation Tool (RCCT) which will allow for a prognosis of resource consumption, relating to a tool’s entire life cycle. To ensure significance, in a first step a tool’s life cycle is analysed. Afterwards all identified interdependencies between parameters are stored in a knowledge base on the one hand to support the development of new manufacturing technologies and on the other to facilitate the functionalization of materials and surfaces. The RCCT offers competitive advantages to the European tool industry, as it provides a calculation of possible savings based on input data, i.e. certain limits or usage conditions such as frequency or life-time. This leads to an overall costs reduction regarding all of the four major scopes and helps them to distinguish themselves from their competitors, especially from those from low-wage countries. In particular, tool manufacturers are enabled to sell products of higher value while tool users have more information concerning resource consumption.