Energy Agents for Energy Load Profiling in Modular Skill-Based Production Environments

Modular skill-based production environments provide a high flexibility to fulfil various requirements in manufacturing like the production of individualized products or the selection of alternative production chains in case of unforeseen disturbances. Within these complex and changing production environments, there is a demand for transparency on the energy consumption and related energy costs for production processes, so that these can be considered during planning and monitoring of machine skills. However, the ability to manufacture products by using such flexible production processes leads to various constellations in which it is difficult to identify and map the related energy consumption of production skills. The objective of this paper is to develop a concept that, in the context of a multi-agent distributed production control system, allows energy agents to interact with resource agents to access energy metering data for energy load profiling during the skill execution in production. A special focus is put on how the functions of energy agents can support a methodical creation of energy load profiles on the granular level of skills. The realization and results are presented on a real-world demonstrator of the SmartFactory-KL as part of a skill-based production environment.