e-Save
Energy Efficiency in the Supply Chain through Collaboration, Advanced Decision Support and Automatic Sensing
Sponsor: European Union
Duration: 01.2012 - 07.2014
Project Partner:
- Intrasoft International SA (Coordinator)
- Athens University of Economics and Business - Research Center
- Barilla
- BOC Asset Management Ltd.
- Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
- ECR Europe
- Intelen
- Metro SA
- Quantis Sàrl
- SimPlan AG
- Dortmund University of Technology
The e-SAVE project contributes to the design of highly energy efficient supply chains by providing systems, services, collaboration platforms and management tools. These support companies in monitoring, controlling and trading their energy consumption and CO2 emissions and provide a sound basis for operational and strategic decisions as well as in supply chain design.
The project focuses on the consumer goods sector and involves the ECR Europe organization, which represents Europe's most important manufacturers and retailers of consumer goods. Direct representatives of the users are the Greek retail chain METRO and the food group Barilla, which has set sustainability and environmental compatibility as particular goals. Within the supply chain, the project looks at the section from pre-packaged goods in the factory to the retailer.
The technical approach in e-SAVE is based on an interoperable information infrastructure that integrates ERP systems with automatic data collection technologies to promote energy efficiency monitoring and provide decision support for energy efficiency improvement. In particular, intelligent smart meters and specific product identification technologies are envisioned as data collection technologies. As decision support tools for energy efficiency, e-SAVE will provide new optimization algorithms for supply chain operations and tools for strategic supply chain design decisions, the latter using simulation technology.
The project will also build on existing market-leading tools of the e-SAVE partners in the fields of energy monitoring, life cycle assessment and simulation.
Overall, the e-SAVE project aims to deliver a modular and extensible infrastructure for information, collaboration and management support. This will not only collect data necessary for effective monitoring of energy consumption and other environmental metrics, but also provide management tools that use this information to support decisions for reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in a feedback loop.