Due to the climate and energy crisis, industrial companies are forced to take actions for a more energy-efficient production. As more modular plants are expected in the market in the future, energy-efficient actions will also have to apply to modular production. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop solutions that enable energy management to be operated with a modular production. At the same time, these solutions should not have a negative impact on the characteristics of a modular production (e. g., flexibility). This paper shows how energy data of a modular production can be provided in aggregated form. In particular, attention is given to the description of the energy data since energy data can only become valuable energy information if the energy data is described in a semantically uniform way.

In the manufacturing domain the topic of the Digital Twin is of growing interest, in particular its integration into the company’s own processes. Although the potential is undisputed, essential questions remain unanswered when it comes to the implementation. Many users find it difficult to weigh up efforts and benefits involved in the creation. Digital Twins can be built for any entity of a system, including those that are composed to ‘System-of-Systems’. However, is it really necessary to create a separate Digital Twin from a factory level down to the smallest screw? On the one hand it would require massive resources to build fine granular models and establish the necessary data flows. Especially small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) are not able to provide these ad hoc. On the other hand, depending on the situation, such a high effort is not necessary for every use case. In this paper, a method is presented that supports potential users, especially SME’s, in the selection and implementation of Digital Twins. Essential information attributes that are of significance in answering the question above are considered as evaluation criteria at decision points. The applicability of the method has been tested on the basis of three use cases with the aim of reducing inefficiencies in planning and control tasks of material flows. The goal is to demonstrate that implementing Digital Twins in the own company does not have to be an all or nothing decision.

The introduction of an energy management system allows companies to monitor their own energy consumption and to improve the energy efficiency of their production. The use of modular production provides companies the flexibility to adapt their production to the demands of the market. In this paper, these two concepts are combined for the first time, thus allowing energy management to be deployed in modular production. In order to achieve this, the Module Type Package (MTP) as the automation-related module description is extended by the aspect of energy management functionalities. This aspect provides the possibility to perform energy-specific measurements in the module's devices as well as to influence the module's energy demand by load management commands.

With the use of an energy management system in an industrial company according to ISO 50001, a step-by-step increase in energy efficiency can be achieved. The realization of energy monitoring and load management functions requires programs on edge devices or PLCs to acquire the data, adapt the data type or scale the values of the energy information. In addition, the energy information must be mapped to communication interfaces (e.g. based on OPC UA) in order to convey this energy information to the energy management application. The development of these energy management programs is associated with a high engineering effort, because the field devices from the heterogeneous field level do not provide the energy information in standardized semantics. To mitigate this engineering effort, a universal energy data information model (UEIM) is developed and presented in this paper.

There is a growing interest in the concept of a Digital Twin, and more and more companies want to take advantage of the benefits and demand them on the market. As the number of Digital Twins continues to grow, however, the question arises how to deal with a multitude of Digital Twins in a factory, and especially how to integrate Digital Twins on a certain level of detail into a Digital Twin on a higher level of abstractions, and how these networks can be managed if each Digital Twin is to be considered individually. The concept presented in this paper shows a possibility to combine Digital Twins in a structured network which is controlled by one single point of truth, called the Digital Twin of a System. An exemplary application of the Digital Twin of a System is presented. Furthermore advantages of the Digital Twin of a System are introduced and discussed. Finally directions for future research on this topic are suggested.

The upcoming challenges in the process industry demand a high flexibility, shorter product development cycles as well as energy and resource efficient production. Especially, energy efficiency of process plants is of substantial importance with regard to the high energy consumption in the process industry. With the introduction of modules and modular plants, the industry tries to overcome these challenges. However, an energy efficient production requires the identification, analysis and utilization of energy potentials. In order to be able to identify energy efficiency potentials in production, the introduction of an energy management system according to ISO 50001 plays a significant role. This paper investigates the extent to which energy management is practiced in the context of modular production and whether there is a need for research. Additionally, a concept is presented how energy management could be implemented in the engineering and operation phases of modular plants.

With the help of an energy management system according to ISO 50001, industrial companies obtain the opportunities to reduce energy consumption and to increase plant efficiencies. In such a system, the communication of energy data has an important function. With the help of so-called energy profiles (e.g. PROFIenergy), energy data can be communicated between the field level and the higher levels via proven communication protocols (e.g. PROFINET). Due to the fact that in most cases several industrial protocols are used in an automation system, the problem is how to transfer energy data from one protocol to another with as less effort as possible. An energy data information model could overcome this problem and describe energy data in a uniform and semantically unambiguous way. Requirements for a unified energy data information model are presented in this paper.

With regard to climate change, increasing energy efficiency is still a significant issue in the industry. In order to acquire energy data at the field level, so-called energy profiles can be used. They are advantageous as they are integrated into existing industrial ethernet standards (e.g. PROFINET). Commonly used energy profiles such as PROFIenergy and sercos Energy have been established in industrial use. However, as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) continues to develop, the question arises whether the established energy profiles are sufficient to fullfil the requirements of the upcoming IIoT communication technologies. To answer this question the paper compares and discusses the common energy profiles with the current and future challenges of energy data communication. Furthermore, this analysis examines the need for further research in this field.