A innovative data-driven platform to improve manufacturing energy savings through proactive, targeted employee interventions

在延续过去20年英国工业能效提高的势头方面，行为变化起到了重要作用。由于像LED照明这样的快速回报技术解决方案已经被广泛实施，实施行为改变是可以在没有大量资本投资的情况下实施的。然而，如果没有良好的用户参与，实施行为改变可能是具有挑战性的，而且更难长期保持，因为旧习惯往往很容易重新出现。Beacon Technology的创新是一个主动的节能干预平台。使用企业中已有的数据流(来自MRP、能源监控、机器输出传感器)和可配置的逻辑规则，可以通过短信/应用内通知向员工实时发布节能干预措施。每一次干预都将解释要采取的行动，以及它将带来的潜在好处，并要求员工提供反馈，如果他们选择不采取行动的话。与当前制造业的行为改变实践截然不同。机器的操作员将收到一条信息，上面写着：机器4小时内不会再运行。关掉机器。这将节省24千瓦时的电力和5.5公斤二氧化碳。这个项目将在Beacon Technology现有的网络应用程序、原生应用程序和核心后端服务上开发一个拟议创新的演示原型，在两个能源密集型制造基地进行试验。该项目将就利用现有业务数据流生成实时干预、用户参与和对照基准数据比较能源消耗的能力提供有价值的反馈。Beacon Technology的成果将是在部署MVP解决方案和支持业务发展的案例研究/白皮书信息方面取得重大进展。

Behavioural change has an important part to play in continuing the momentum of energy-efficiency improvements made by UK industry over the past 20 year. As quick-payback technological solutions like LED-lighting have already been widely implemented, enacting behavioural change stands apart as being implementable without significant capital investment.Implementing behavioural change can however be challenging without good user engagement, and even harder to maintain in the long term, as old habits tend to easily resurface.Beacon Technology's innovation is a proactive energy-savings intervention platform. Using data-streams already available in a business (from MRPs, energy monitoring, machine output sensors) and configurable logic rules, energy-saving interventions can be issued to employees in real-time via SMS/in-app notification. Each intervention will explain the action to take, the potential benefit it will have, and ask the employee for feedback if they chose not to action the suggestion.The difference from current behavioural change practice in manufacturing is stark. Rather than a poster on a machine saying 'switch off after use', the machine's operator will receive a message saying 'Machine 1 will not run again for 4 hours. Switch the machine off. This will save 24 kWh of electricity and 5.5 kg CO2'.This project will develop a demonstrator-prototype of the proposed innovation on Beacon Technology's existing web-application, native-app and core back-end services, for trial at two energy-intensive manufacturing sites. The project will provide valuable feedback on ability to use existing business data-streams to generate real-time interventions, user engagement and comparative energy consumption against baseline data. The outcome for Beacon Technology will be significant progress towards an MVP solution for deployment and case-study/white paper information to support business development.