Development of a cost-effective energy and water management system for small and medium-sized manufacturers

Energy and water management has become a necessary part of industrial production for manufacturers to reduce their environmental impact and production cost because of increasingly serious resources crisis, strict environmental regulations and consumers' demand for sustainable products. However, due to the complex operation processes and high investment cost, the existing energy, water and production management systems are not applicable and profitable for small and medium-sized manufacturers which are featured as poor capital flow and worker capability. In this paper, we develop a cost-effective energy and water management system, embedded in the production system. In addition to provide the production manager and workers in small and medium-sized manufacturers with an easy-to-operate way to conduct planning and supervision as well as complete production and information collection, the proposed system can find out the production process and team with low energy and water efficiencies by monitoring consumption in a low-cost way. The production manager can accordingly take technology improvement on specific process and enhance environmental training on specific workers to reduce consumption and increase profit. The monitoring results can also be used for financial accounting, cleaner production inspection and environmental products certification. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.