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Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642

49th CIRP Conference on MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS - CIRP CMS 2016

Energy consumption estimation for machining processes based on real-time

shop floor monitoring via wireless sensor networks.
Dimitris Mourtzis*, Ekaterini Vlachou, Nikolaos Milas, George Dimitrakopoulos
Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems and Automation, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras, 26500, Rio Patras,
Greece

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-261-0 99-7262; fax: +30-261-0 99-7744. E-mail address: mourtzis@lms.mech.upatras.gr

Abstract

The increasing concern about the depletion of the energy repositories places the energy efficiency issues in high priority. In the manufacturing
sector, the improvement of energy efficiency is a challenging task due to the complexity of manufacturing systems and the requirements for
flexible operation targeting highly customised products. Towards this end, the estimation of the energy consumption of a machining task, and
therefore the machining cost, is necessary. This paper presents a machine tool monitoring methodology that integrates sensory systems, a
scheduling module, and human operators to perform real-time monitoring on the shop-floor. A monitoring system is designed to capture real-
time measurements from sensors attached on machine tools and perform the necessary pre-processing to transmit these measurements to a Cloud
server via wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, the input from human operators is utilized to collect the machining parameters. The collected
information is fused through an information fusion mechanism to extract meaningful results. The results are stored in a database for the reuse in
future tasks by estimating the energy consumption of new cases, through a case-based reasoning approach, prior the job dispatching. Therefore,
the machining parameters of the new case can be modified targeting energy consumption reduction. The proposed system is delivered as a Cloud
software-as-a-service to realise the philosophy of Cloud manufacturing.

©©2016
2015TheTheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published B.V. This
by Elsevier B.V.is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Scientific committee of the 49th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems (CIRP-CMS 2016).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 49th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems
Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, Monitoring; Cloud manufacturing; CBR

1. Introduction and therefore provides useful input to decision makers in order

The depletion of the energy resources and the degradation
of the environment place the issue of energy efficiency in high
priority. Manufacturing is a sector with a large share in the
energy consumption field with a percentage about 28% of the
primary energy use, and about 38% of the CO2 emissions
globally [1]. Except for the environmental footprint of
manufacturing systems that needs to be controlled, the energy
consumption corresponds to a portion of the cost of a
manufacturing process and directly affects the cost of products.
Therefore, techniques that provide awareness and reduction of
the machine tool energy consumption are vital.
The issue of the energy efficiency in manufacturing has been
investigated since 1980 with the work of [2] to conclude that
the energy capabilities of machine tools are scarcely exploited.
The emergence of cost-efficient sensory systems enables the
direct monitoring of the power requirements of machine tools
to improve their practices [3]. Furthermore, philosophies such
as Cloud Manufacturing, along with ICT systems provide
opportunities in terms of ubiquitous access to information and
knowledge sharing. Therefore, smart monitoring systems can
provide real-time awareness of the energy consumption and
therefore contribute to the increase of the energy efficiency.
The emerging of new technologies in computing has opened
the path to the digitisation of manufacturing and facilitated the
knowledge management. Modern IT tools can store the
documentation of the manufactured products in digital form.
Therefore, the paperwork is reduced and the knowledge can be
easily reused in future cases. A major challenge in this
digitisation is the synchronisation between the physical and the
cyber world. To address this challenge, monitoring devices can
be applied to raise information from the shop-floor to the higher
levels of manufacturing enterprises and hence support the
decision making.

2212-8271 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 49th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2016.11.110
638 Dimitris Mourtzis et al. / Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642
Aiming to meet these challenges, this paper combines a
monitoring framework with a knowledge retrieval tool to gain
insights on the energy requirements of machine tools in the
milling process.
2. State of the Art
On the subject of energy consumption estimation, Dahmus
[4] performs a high level recording of the energy consumption
in machining processes to identify the contribution of the
machine tool subsystems. The rest of the scientific work on this
subject can be classified in the categories of theoretical
modelling, the generalisation of experimental data, and the use
of real-time monitoring. Avram and Xirouchakis propose in [5]
an analytical model for the estimation of the variable
mechanical energy requirements of a machine tool system with
experimental verification. This approach takes into account
both steady-state and transient conditions. The exploitation of
experimental results to conclude on a model for the estimation
of energy consumption based on the material removal rate
(MRR) has been performed in [6]. In a higher level, a
framework was proposed by [7], based on multi criteria
decision making methods to incorporate energy consumption
and environmental impact considerations. Therefore, the
assignment scheme results to the reduction of the energy
consumption of the manufacturing plant. The effect of the
cutting parameters modification on the power consumption of
machine tools is also investigated by [8]. Furthermore, the
authors leveraged their capability to modify the control method
of the spindle and the axes to reduce the energy consumption
by synchronizing the spindle acceleration with the feed system.
The necessity for the use of real-time monitoring in
manufacturing has been stressed in the work of [9]. The authors
identified that the main requirements for monitoring systems in
production are the robustness, the capability for
reconfiguration, the reliability, the intelligence, and the cost
efficiency. Therefore, the fluctuating demands for flexibility in
production require smart monitoring systems to raise
information from the shop-floor. In the monitoring systems,
various sensors can be employed (e.g. force, acceleration) but
current sensors can provide useful information without
interrupting the monitored subject [9]. Moreover, various
topologies for the communication of monitoring devices can be
employed. In manufacturing the wireless sensor network
topologies are the most eligible candidates as they offer
flexibility and scalability, especially in flexible environments
such as the shop-floors [11].
The use of monitoring devices can transform the shop-floors
into cyber-physical systems [12]. This transformation can
provide awareness on the status of the resources and increase
on their utilisation [13][14]. The extraction of meaningful
information from multiple data sources requires the use of
information fusion techniques [15]. The information fusion can
be performed in three levels i.e. sensor level, feature level, and
decision level [16]. In the decision level the Dempster-Shafer
theory is mostly used, and can be paired with decision support
algorithms to extract the weights for each source of information
[17].
Manufacturing systems require intelligence in collaboration,
and adaptability to dynamic changes. Towards this end, the
philosophy of Cloud manufacturing can act as enabler for data
exchange between IT tools and ubiquitous access by multiple
users and IT tools to information [18]. Another recent study
performed an extensive literature review in Cloud
Manufacturing presenting the key benefits brought by the
adoption of Cloud technology in manufacturing, such as
scalability to business size and needs, and ubiquitous network
access [19].
The Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) process is a problem
solving technique that relies on the reuse of past experience.
The main benefit of CBR is that it can be used as a similarity
measurement among different cases [20]. The CBR method is
utilised in this research work due to its suitability for complex
and difficult to model systems, such as machine tools, and
because case generalization is required. This technique has
been successfully applied in various domains such as design,
decision making, planning, diagnosis, medical applications,
law, e-learning, knowledge management, image processing or
recommender systems, etc. [21].
To enhance the information that refers to a machining part
with the requirements of energy consumption, this scientific
work proposes a methodology for the energy consumption
estimation in machining operations, leveraging the information
and knowledge that lies in historical data. This methodology is
integrated in a Cloud-based machine monitoring framework
which has as main inputs real-time measurements from sensors
on machine-tools, and information from the human operator,
the process plan, and the scheduling module of the production
planning system. The knowledge retrieval is performed
through the CBR methodology, along with a similarity
mechanism.
3. Methodology
The methodology that is followed in this scientific work
combines a real-time monitoring framework with the CBR to
estimate the energy consumption in a machining task (Fig. 1).
The choice of using a cased-based approach to estimate the
power consumption is mainly driven by the fact that the
machine tool capabilities are scarcely exploited in real life
machining operations [2] supported by the fact that the
machining power consumption accounts for less than 60% of
the overall under full load [4]. These two facts allow the
estimation of the power consumption in a more abstract level
without constructing a detailed mathematical model that is
bounded with specific machine tools.
3.1. Monitoring framework
The core of the monitoring system is a dedicated data
acquisition (DAQ) device for the monitoring of machine tools.
The DAQ employs inductive current sensors to monitor the
currents of the main motor drives of a machine tool i.e. the
spindle and the moving axes, along with the overall power
 Dimitris Mourtzis et al. / Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642 639

Machine tools CLOUD

Similarity results
Spindle current platform
Spindle RPM New order New order
Axes X,Y,Z parameters
CBR
Axes C,B
Power consumption
Data
Human operators Cloud gateway processing Database
Process plan Engineers (Information
Tool magazines fusion)
Visualisation of
Running task results & KPIs

Cutting parameters - Raw

material

Machine schedule
Task start time and
duration

Physical Shop- Cyber-Physical Shop-floor

floor

Fig. 1 Overview of the combined methodology consisted of the shop-floor monitoring and the CBR.

consumption. In the general occasion of a balanced three-phase To synchronise the cyber with the physical world, an
load, the apparent power consumption is calculated via Eq. 1. information fusion mechanism is employed. This information
fusion extends the methodology that is presented in [15] by
ܵ ൌ ξ͵ ή ܸ௟ ή ‫ܫ‬௟ Eq. 1
adding a second level of fusion that fuses the information from
Where, Vl is the grid line voltage and is considered constant the DAQ, the human operator, and the schedule. In this level,
and the Il is the average line current of the three phases as the analytical hierarchy process generates the weights for the
measured in real-time by the monitoring system. Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence, in order to identify the
The active power can be calculated from the apparent power actual status of the machine tool.
with multiplication with the power factor that was measured
offline and is assigned the value 0.40. The value of the power
factor is justified by the fact that the machine tools are
composed of induction motors that operate under low loads that
lead to power factor values far below 1. Furthermore, the
dominant presence of three-phase induction motors makes the
older machine tools almost balanced loads. This fact applies
also in the cases of modern machine tools which use power
electronic topologies to balance the load among the three
phases.
Each machine tool has a DAQ installed in the electrical
cabinet which collects the measurements and performs the
necessary pre-processing of the sensor outputs. The DAQs of a
shop-floor are organised in a wireless sensor network (WSN)
following the star topology. The selection of the WSN was
driven by the requirements for flexibility and reduced
infrastructure. The data transmission is coordinated by a central
gateway which is responsible to collect the data from the DAQs
and organise them into packets before transmitting them to a Fig. 2 Sensor data capturing and transmission to Cloud.
Cloud server for further processing and visualisation Fig. 2.
Except for the DAQs, the proposed monitoring architecture 3.2. CBR Methodology
integrates the human operators and the machine tool schedule.
The machine tool schedule is provided by the scheduling Aiming to correlate the energy consumption with the parts
module of a planning system and includes the task sequence, being produced, the monitoring system presented in the
along with the cutting parameters of the process plan and the previous section, stores in the database the energy requirements
used cutting tools. The human operator informs the system of each machining task. Therefore, the engineers can gain
about the task execution and the mean feedrate that is used useful insights on the energy requirements of new cases, along
during machining.
640 Dimitris Mourtzis et al. / Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642

with the opportunity to reuse process parameters of previews strategy that was followed in the past. The output of this
cases. mechanism is the process plan information and the average
This procedure is facilitated by the CBR methodology and power consumption of the most similar cases. Therefore, the
the similarity mechanism. Case Based Reasoning (CBR) engineer can reuse information from past process plans and
focuses on solving problems by adapting acceptable solutions also estimate the energy consumption of the new part using the
and comparing differences and similarities, between previous past case average power consumption and the machining time
as well as current products (Fig. 3). that is calculated in the CAM tool.
Shop-floor An important benefit of the CBR is that knowledge can be
Engineer retrieved for different goals by selecting different features that
New are stored in a database and the appropriate weights. For
New case (part) presented as a
order
new task example, the process plan engineer can use the CBR with other
Received
features to get results on similarity according to geometrical
features.
Retrieval
Similarity
Past Knowledge 4. Development of the proposed framework
Engine
Cases Repository

Return Modern manufacturing systems under the umbrella of Cloud

matched utilise a new business model capable of managing the growth
cases CBR in the amount of the collected data, incorporating Internet of
Things, and mobile computing. Following these philosophies,
the proposed framework is implemented as a Cloud-service
Revise
similar
Adapt Retain that consists of hardware and software components.
case Case
case
4.1. Hardware development

Fig. 3 The CBR methodology. For the monitoring of machine tools, a DAQ has been
designed and developed. The DAQ has at its core the
The CBR takes as inputs information from the process plan microcontroller unit (MCU) ATmega 2560, that has embedded
that is related to a new part and include the raw material, the the necessary peripherals for sensor signal capturing. The
cutting parameters, and the use of lubrication, along with the selected current sensors are split-core inductive clamps and can
machine tool and cutting tool parameters. The weight be attached in the electrical cabinet without interrupting the
assignment has been according to the reflection of each feature wiring. The outputs of the sensors are connected to a sensor
on the overall power consumption as it was indicated in board that is a part of the DAQ and performs signal filtering
experiments in various situations. A detailed presentation of the and adjustment prior to the sampling by the microcontroller.
selected features and the corresponding weights can be found The microcontroller pre-processes the current signals to
in Table 1. calculate the root mean square (RMS) values.
The WSN is facilitated with the use of DIGI XBee ZigBee
Table 1: The features and the corresponding weights that are used in the CBR RF module. The selection of ZigBee over other wireless
standards is performed due to its support to various network
Feature Type Weight topologies and encryption algorithms, and its robust operation
Machine specifications 40% with functionalities such as collision avoidance, retries, and
Spindle power Num 20% acknowledgements performed in the hardware.
Overall power Num 20% A DIGI XBee ZigBee RF module is also installed on the
Process plan parameters 55% microcomputer that is responsible for the coordination of the
Depth of cut (mm) Num 5% data transmission in the WSN. The microcomputer collects the
Spindle rpm utilisation Num 20% measurements from the DAQs in the shop-floor, organises
Feedrate (mm/min) Num 10% them into packets and transmits them to the Cloud server by
Material (mm) Alpha 10% using Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests.
Use of lubricant Alpha 10%
Tool parameters 5% 4.2. Software development
Teeth number Num 1%
The proposed framework is implemented as a Web
Width of cut Num 1%
Application developed on top of a Cloud Service. This
Tool material Alpha 3%
application is confronted to Representational State Transfer
Sum of weights 100%
(REST) architectural pattern which is based on simple HTTP.
The cloud-based platform is deployed on an Infrastructure as a
After performing pairwise comparisons with the historical Service (IaaS) virtual machine running a Linux based operating
data of past cases, a similarity mechanism returns the most system and includes an Apache HTTP server, a Ruby on Rails
similar cases. Hence, the process planning engineer is aware on framework, and a MongoDB database.
the energy consumption of the new part and the machining
 Dimitris Mourtzis et al. / Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642 641

In addition, graphical user interfaces (GUIS) are developed meaningful results, two different materials, two different
for data entry and visualization of the results. The human cutting tools, as well as three feedrate values are used. This
operator of machine tools utilises a mobile device to provide selection determines the values of the rest of the cutting
information to the system and gain access to the results. parameters and the use of lubricant. The details of the
Furthermore, the process plan engineer provides the experiments are presented in Table 3.
information that are relevant to the process plan in a web
application that exploits also information on the machine tool Power requirements during machining
schedule. The schedule is gained in Extensible Markup 10000
Spindle acceleration
Language (XML) format from the scheduling module of a 9000

Apparent Power (VA)

8000
legacy planning system.
7000
The issues of security are regarded in three main layers, the 6000
shop floor layer, the web application layer, and the Cloud 5000 Z positioning
service operating system layer. The selected counter 4000 Machining
measurements against threats are the encryption on data 3000 Rapid feed
2000
transfers, the identification of clients through Secure Sockets
1000
Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) protocol used in 0
parallel with a secure database authentication system, and
Virtual Private Network technology.
No of Samples
5. Case study and Results Fig. 4 Power profile during machining

To validate the proposed methodology, four parts with Table 3: The set of experiments and the results
similar geometry and features, but with different material and
process plan parameters are manufactured by the same machine Feature Case1 Case2 Case3 Case4
tool. The machine tool that is the subject of this study is a XYZ Machine New
SMX SLV 3-axis machine tool and its specifications are shown specifications case
in Table 2.
Spindle power 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75
Table 2 Case study machine tool specifications (kW)
Overall power 10 10 10 10
(kW)
XYZ SMX SLV Turret Mill
Process plan
Spindle drive motor 3.75 kW
parameters
Spindle max velocity 3600 rpm
Depth of cut (mm) 2 1 1 1
Longitudinal travel - X axis 1000 mm
Spindle rpm 0.439 0.447 0.414 0.447
Cross travel - Y axis 410 mm
utilisation
Knee vertical travel - Z axis 400 mm
Feedrate 100 200 100 300
Overall power consumption 10 kW (mm/min)
Material Alum. Alum. Steel Alum.
The monitoring system captures the power consumption of Use of lubricant No Yes Yes Yes
the machine tool throughout the machining process. In Fig. 4 Tool parameters
measurements from a part of the process are presented. The Teeth number 2 4 2 4
first event that corresponds to a very high peak in the apparent Width of cut 10 10 10 10
power is the acceleration of the spindle. Following the spindle Tool material S.Carb. HSS S.Carb. HSS
peak, the power consumption rises a little when the positioning Similarity with 85.73% 96.67% 86.56% -
of the Z-axis is performed. During the material removal new order
process, a rise in the overall power consumption can be Estimated - - - 1555
observed. Finally, a peak, but significantly lower than the average power
spindle’s, can be observed when positioning of the axes is consumption
performed in rapid feed. From the graph, it can be concluded Actual average 1395 1502 1465 1562
that even though in the selected machine tool the peripherals power VA VA VA VA
account for a little portion of the overall power consumption, consumption
the portion that is related to the actual machining process is
very small. The largest portion of the energy consumption in The outcome of the similarity mechanism is that the new
this machine tool is related to the spindle movement. case is most similar with case two by a percentage of 96.67%.
The efficiency of the approach in terms of selecting the The final phase of the CBR is the adoption of the similarity
features and the corresponding weights for the CBR is
degree to further estimate the power consumption of the new
evaluated by manufacturing four parts in a milling process with
case. The 96.67% indicates a power consumption of 1555VA
a single cutting tool per process. Furthermore, to reduce the
for the new case. This value can be verified by the results of the
required set of experiments while managing to extract
642 Dimitris Mourtzis et al. / Procedia CIRP 57 (2016) 637 – 642

experiments and also by the Figure 4 which demonstrates the
power consumption profile of the new case.
6. Conclusions
This paper proposes an approach for machine tools energy
consumption estimation based on real-time monitoring
measurements and on a case-based reasoning approach.
Aiming to correlate the energy consumption with the parts
being produced, the monitoring system stores in the database
the energy requirements of each machining task and the
engineers are capable of gaining useful insights on the energy
requirements of new cases, along with the opportunity to reuse
process parameters of previews cases.
The process planning engineer is aware of the energy
consumption of the new part and on the machining strategy that
was followed in the past. Among the main advantages of this
approach is the reuse of the past data, and the gaining of useful
insights on power consumption of the new parts through the
real-time measurements of the monitoring system.
In a future study, a further validation of the proposed
system, focusing on the extension of functionalities related to
more complex products as well as various cutting tools, will be
performed.
Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper is partially supported by
the EU funded research project “Collaborative and Adaptive
Process Planning for Sustainable Manufacturing Environments
− CAPP4SMEs” (314024).
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