Sustainable Production Scheduling with On-Site Intermittent Renewable Energy and Demand-Side Management: A Feed-Animal Case Study

Abstract

By shifting towards renewable energy sources, manufacturing facilities can significantly reduce their carbon footprint. This environmental issue can be addressed by developing sustainable production through on-site renewable electricity generation and demand-side management policies. In this study, the energy required to power the manufacturing system is obtained from different energy sources: the conventional grid, on-site renewable energy, and an energy storage system. The main objective is to generate a production schedule for a flexible multi-process and multi-product manufacturing system that optimizes the utilization and procurement of electricity without affecting the final demand. A mathematical programming model is proposed to minimize both the total production costs and energy costs, considering a time-of-use pricing policy and an incentive-based program. The uncertainty in renewable energy generation, specifically under the worst-case scenario, is taken into account and the model is transformed into a robust two-stage optimization model. To solve this model, a decomposition approach based on a genetic algorithm is applied. The effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm is tested on a real industry case involving feed-animal products. A sensitivity analysis is conducted by modifying problem parameters. Finally, a comparison with the nested Column and Constraint Generation algorithm is performed. The obtained results from these analyses validated the proposed model and algorithm.