Concept for an Integrated Planning of Heat Flows in Production Systems

The introduction of an integrated planning concept for heat flows is motivated by the identified discrepancy between existing approaches and defined requirements. To close this discrepancy and further elaborate on this issue, the chapter first formulates different objectives, requirements and potential stakeholders for an appropriate concept (Sect. 4.1). Based on those objectives and requirements, a system perspective is derived which is capable of including and reflecting all relevant system levels (Sect. 4.2). Those aspects are broad together in the developed model concept which is embedded into a problem solving process, provides various models as well as their interactions to perform diverse evaluations, and enhance an interdisciplinary system understanding. The models are described regarding both the conceptual logic as well as considerations for implementation (Sect. 4.3). In more detail, the existing heat flows in production systems demonstrate the necessity to use an integrated approach in order to gain a sound system understanding. Thus, it is described how the different system entities can be modeled (Sect. 4.4). Different analysis and visualization methods per system level further facilitate the understanding of individual system entity’s performance (Sect. 4.5) as well as their impact and repercussions on other system levels. Those methods interact with the system entity models. The chapter closes with an application procedure explaining how the concept can be used in practice (Sect. 4.6).