Open Access

Chantal Ganschinietz

• This doctoral thesis fosters a simultaneously ecological and economic striving for a cost efficient and environmentally friendly orientation of industry. To that, it aims at improving the energy efficiency of energy supply for production processes, since production processes are accountable for 90% of industrial energy consumption (Ziesing, 2018). One measure to increase the energy efficiency while securing energy supply, is the installation of on-site energy conversion systems (ECSs) (cf., Campana et al., 2019). This measure saves the most energy and is especially cost efficient when the overall energy conversion efficiency is as high as technically possible (less dissipation of useful energy). Thus, if the ECS is adequately designed and integrated for the specific application case, it can increase energy efficiency and decrease total costs at the same time (Behzadi et al., 2019). The adequate design of on-site ECS is a complex, problem-specific, and strategic decision topic forThis doctoral thesis fosters a simultaneously ecological and economic striving for a cost efficient and environmentally friendly orientation of industry. To that, it aims at improving the energy efficiency of energy supply for production processes, since production processes are accountable for 90% of industrial energy consumption (Ziesing, 2018). One measure to increase the energy efficiency while securing energy supply, is the installation of on-site energy conversion systems (ECSs) (cf., Campana et al., 2019). This measure saves the most energy and is especially cost efficient when the overall energy conversion efficiency is as high as technically possible (less dissipation of useful energy). Thus, if the ECS is adequately designed and integrated for the specific application case, it can increase energy efficiency and decrease total costs at the same time (Behzadi et al., 2019). The adequate design of on-site ECS is a complex, problem-specific, and strategic decision topic for each application case. Especially for manufacturing companies, however, this planning complexity is even further increased by the hierarchical interdependency between the energy-supplying ECS and the energy-demanding production system (PS). Due to this interdependency, the varying energy demand of the PS during production processes can immensely influence the overall energy efficiency of an ECS. Consequently, for an adequate design with high energy efficiency, this interdependency must be considered during ECS design, although it increases the problem complexity. This complexity has resulted in numerous publications on different specific planning problems within an unstructured research field. For these reasons and to identify and address unresolved topics of this research field, this doctoral dissertation comprises four contributions (C1-C4) which focus on answering and clarifying the following research questions: - RQ1: How can the research area of ECS design for manufacturing companies be structured and which planning factors are crucial for an adequate ECS design? - RQ2: Which individual planning problems of ECS design have been addressed thus far or reveal a deficiency in research? - RQ3: How can different complex and individual planning problems of ECS design be addressed to increase energy efficiency? - RQ4: How do the most important planning factors influence ECS design and ECS energy efficiency for manufacturing company? - RQ5: How can the concept of hierarchical planning be incorporated during ECS design? To answer RQ1-RQ5 three contributions (C1-C3) focus directly on the design of ECS for manufacturing companies, whereas the fourth contribution (C4) addresses a new method for an approximative anticipation function in hierarchical planning. This anticipation function, exemplary for nesting problems in manufacturing companies with machine learning, can be adapted and applied to the anticipation of base-level production scheduling and ECS operation during ECS design. This doctoral dissertation is organized as follows: First an introductory section provides the theoretical foundation by outlining characteristics and hierarchical interdependencies of ECS design for manufacturing companies. Then, in section II, the raised research questions RQ1 to RQ5 are subsequently addressed by a total of four scientific publications. Closing, a summarizing discussion of the contributions` added value and an outlook on opportunities for future research is given in section III.…