How to Use a Business Rules Engine for Sustainability: What You Should Know
Production is complicated. Manufacturers face unique challenges throughout their entire business, all the way from the shop floor to the office environment and even into the cloud. The difficulty of creating an environment where the necessary elements of creating a product all work together in harmony can sometimes feel insurmountable. In addition to all of this, creating sustainable business practices is a looming challenge that manufacturers in just about every industry face. Finding ways to manage energy, reduce consumption, and just plain make the world a better place to live are paramount to any production facility. After all of that, the challenge becomes a matter of optimizing each individual process to perfect it both individually and in conjunction with the larger group, while at the same time ensuring they minimize environmental impact. This optimization is necessary for any business who wants to achieve its long-term goals and can be dramatically enhanced by a business rules engine. Not only does this tool promote efficiency in production, but it also enhances sustainability through a plant’s energy management system and ISO 50001 standard. Let’s learn more:
What is a Business Rules Engine?
A business rules engine is a tool that allows companies to manage and automate their decision-making processes. This means that users will input pre-defined logic for the rule engine to follow in order to determine the outcomes of certain processes. In manufacturing, a cloud business rules engine can process the data that enters it in real time in order to create customizable logic settings for a specific company or facility. This allows quick and streamlined scalability when the rule engine needs to change to accommodate new or enhanced processes. One huge benefit to manufacturers is that they can utilize this data to customize not only their internal production processes, but also their KPIs in an individual plant or even companywide. Importantly, this functionality can be used for a company’s energy management needs, especially as they relate to ISO 50001.
What is ISO 50001?
The meaning of ISO 50001 is relatively straightforward. It offers useful ways for businesses across all industries to implement energy management systems that allow them to enhance their overall value in the marketplace and better handle sustainability efforts through their energy programs. The ISO standard encourages and assists companies in policy development, data analysis, continuous improvement, creating reasonable objectives, and more. All of these make it possible for manufacturers to improve their energy consumption and efficiency, thus benefiting the natural environment.
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Why is Energy Management Important?
Outside of presenting a good image to customers, energy management actually comes with a wide range of benefits for manufacturing facilities. A few of them include:
Cost Savings – energy management allows companies to track exactly what’s happening with their machines, meaning they can reduce and optimize energy consumption as needed, reducing expenses in the long term.
Compliance – Regional and national governments around the world enforce energy use and emission regulations. Energy management shows manufacturers their status in real time, allowing them to fully comply with their local governing agencies.
Operational Efficiency – During the process of identifying where energy use can be optimized, many production facilities often also find inefficiencies in their operations at the same time. Through this identification process, they can also reduce enhance overall operational efficiency at the same time.
Innovation – The pursuit of energy efficiency frequently drives the adoption of new technologies and processes. This can lead to innovation and the development of advanced manufacturing methods, improving overall productivity and product quality.
Competitive Advantage – Along with energy management comes an edge over the competition. Cost savings allow businesses to offer better pricing, while a sustainable approach means improved marketing to consumers who care about the world around them.
Business Rules Engine and Energy Management: How it Works
A cloud business rules engine is the simplest way for a manufacturer to begin collecting the data they need to truly optimize their energy management system. No matter what platform the rules engine utilizes, it can collect real-time energy use information from sensors and meters throughout a facility. With the cloud-based system, it can integrate with other devices to collect data on other sustainability measures, such as electricity, gas, steam, and beyond. Once the engine collects this information, it can analyze all of it together to calculate the key energy performance indicators (EnPIs) a company should track. Once this EnPI data is monitored, manufacturers are able to see patterns on clear dashboards that show the true energy use in a facility or group of facilities. This allows businesses to conform to ISO 50001 standards and optimize their energy use and management to achieve the incredible benefits outlined in the section above.
Get Started
Any manufacturer seeking to improve their energy management program needs to calculate EnPIs. Doing so in real time makes it possible to achieve cost savings, reduced energy consumption, operational efficiency, and perhaps most importantly, reduce their environmental footprint. A cloud-based rule engine makes this possible. Talk to PA today to learn how you can begin to realize these benefits as quickly as possible.
