Production Planning Under Economic and Ecologic Objectives - A Comparison in Case Studies from Metals Production

Summary

Competition forces industrial companies to continuously improve resource efficiency. In the field of recycling of by-products from metal industries coke and coal are the most important primary resources. Hence, improvements can be achieved either by reducing the necessary coke and coal input or by maximizing the production output. As the use of coke and coal is also responsible for the major part of their CO₂ emissions, the enhancement of the resource efficiency also leads to a reduction of these. It is the aim of this contribution to further analyze the relationship between economic and environmental objectives such as the maximization of the contribution margin or the minimization of CO₂ emissions in operational production planning. The analysis is carried out for two case studies. We use an approach based on a problem adequate modeling of the production processes enabling to model the input-output relationships between used resources and outputs (products and by-products). In the following section the general methodological approach is explained before the case studies are described. Finally conclusions are drawn.