It is indispensable to allocate costs to different consumers due to high costs for energy and resources. The resulting transparency is also an important (educational) factor for energy savings in addition to pure further cost allocation.

WiriTec^® C provides various options and methods to carry out these cost allocations. These options range from plain further cost allocations based on defined allocation formula such as area percentages, e.g., up to complex, multi-level billing workflows based on flexible, time-depending rule sets. WiriTec^® C enables you to allocate energy- as well as resource costs to the respective consuming units.

Not only ISO 50.001, but also internal guidelines and policies often require an energy efficient behavior and the respective documentation thereof. To achieve these objectives, global energy savings targets are centrally defined to be reached by execution of respective energy savings measures.

As this is certainly not an end in itself, not only the goals, but also the measures executed as well as those planned need to be documented, and the actually achieved savings as well. To meet these requirements, WiriTec^® C provides an adequate tool-set consisting of the modules measure-management and -documentation. Apart from the seamless documentation of all relevant parameters, evaluation mechanisms are available as a matter of fact, to be able to easily control and quickly communicate respective results.

As the absolute consumption of energy and resources does not say anything about the efficiency of the use, energy as well as process performance indicators are indispensable.

The scope of functionality of the formula editor provides customers widespread possibilities to calculate and present such performance indicators. Users can choose from a large variety of options: from basic calculations such as consumption referred to an area over to slightly more complex performance indicators based on production parameters up to highly sophisticated calculations using regression analytics or other mathematical procedures.

Reliable and accurate forecasts about future energy and resource demands in companies with high energy costs are absolutely mandatory. It only can be purchased at favorable conditions if you know when and how much energy is needed. Furthermore, the negotiating position can be improved towards the suppliers.

We have developed various forecasting tools in order to support our customers in this important issue. The easiest use case is to calculate a linear consumption trend based on defined past consumptions using the trend analysis. This approach is useful for checking on contractually agreed purchase volumes, for instance. Forecasts, in return, go a step further by calculating a forecasting model based on media consumption of a past period. On one hand, this forecasting model is based on external targets, and standardises the past values by influencing factors on the other. Regression forecasts reach beyond the previous methods by starting with factors being the cause of consumption. Based on past consumption, dependencies of consumptions from factors are calculated and trained over a longer period of time. This calculation basis allows to predict future consumptions very precisely.

Nowadays, most medium-sized and large companies need to provide information about their consumption of energies and resources as well as produced waste and emissions and report them accordingly. The reporting itself is often standardised and automated or was being outsourced to an external service provider. Therefore, the actual collection of underlying data puts the compa­nies in a position of considerable investments and diffi­culties. This applies particularly for large companies or those with many distributed locations.

Since the quantities and not the costs are mandatory for the reporting, these must be manually transferred from the invoice to the reporting system. This annual (typical reporting period) data collection is not only very time-consuming but also very error-prone. All collected data will be permanently and centrally sto­red and can be analysed graphically and alphanumerical­ly with our standard methods. Year comparisons, com­parisons of different locations or business units or even the development compared to internal guidelines can be easily created.

Existing internal or external reporting tools can be filled with the required data via standard in­terfaces.

IT support for operational management models is gaining importance as more and more contracting agreements are concluded. These contracts have long durations whi­le boundary conditions which were originally decisive for the contractual conditions are changing immensely. The contractor has to provide optimal service for his ins­tallations while being confronted with an additional chal­lenge: He has to deal with new conditions. A good data situation which documents changes in the process flow and serves as evidence helps him.

Basis is the smooth documentation of energy and resour­ce consumptions for years combined with process and environment information which are the decisive funda­ment for consumption. Running, automatic monitoring processes with intelligent features can detect trends and deviations. Therefore, it can serve as an early warning system for the contractor. At the same time, it is made transparent for the end customer how its energy and re­source consumption is changing. The technical and main­tenance and care processes are important in addition to economic aspects which are aimed at the optimisation of costs.

The determination of the energy demand for production processes are challenges that companies which are seri­ous about energy efficiency need to face. Strategies for energy optimisation can only be developed if it is known which amounts of energy and resources are spent for individual production steps.

On the one hand, it needs to be determined under which circumstances and at which process stage a more de­tailed view is worth to consider. On the other hand, the suggestibility plays a decisive part. Serious process chan­ges are rarely a subject for discussion as this intervention in the core business of a company often cannot be justi­fied by saving energy.

Thanks to the powerful formula editor on one hand and the complex rule sets on the other, we are able to allocate different energy volumes to the individual production and process steps and calculate the individual consumptions. Thus, you will get a precise idea not only of your production consumptions, but you will also recognize both inexplicable discrepancies and peaks. As a matter of consequence, you will then be able to realize existing saving potentials.

For a considerable amount of time, our sister company speedikon FM AG has been intensely working on the topic of lifecycle management. In close cooperation with customers, a series of modules has been developed which facilitate a lifecycle perspective on both real estate and technical facilities keeping a clear focus on costs. speedikon FM AG pursues a really pragmatical approach, resulting from different methods that customers have already applied successfully. 

We are supporting our colleagues providing useful energy management data, as both energy consumption as well as the frequency of faults strongly depend on the respective quality condition of a building or a technical facility. The integration of energy management into lifecycle management expands the database and improves the informative value.

Discover more information on this topic on speedikon FM AG website.

In complex buildings and installations a large number of faults, warnings or other procedural and status messa­ges can occur which need to be interpreted and evalua­ted immediately. Often there is no uniform source of interference but a variety of installations, control technologies and monito­ring systems from various manufacturers with different and often proprietary protocols and methods for messa­ge dispatch and administration.

WiriTec GmbH created a system with its reporting management which centrally gathers all notifications from various sources and interprets comprehensively in order to unknot this Babylonian language chaos.

The system has a very high level of flexibility with regard to device, bus, field level and IT interfaces in order to fa­cilitate a connection to different data sources. Therefo­re, all customary and standard installations and control technologies as well as existing Helpdesk systems can be easily connected and integrated. Even analogue notifica­tions can be collected, interpreted and imported into the system.

All faults and profile violations are entered into the cent­ral „event table“ and are available for further processing or interpretation. Therefore, no notifications are lost and the processing process can still be understood later on.

Figure: Profile violation

Help and servicedesk systems in which the organisatio­nal processing of faults takes place, are closely connected to fault notifications. Our affiliate company, the speedikon FM AG, has adapted many systems to meet individual customer requirements which support the whole process up to orders, material orders and personnel deployment as well as the place­ment of orders.

Manually posted notifications such as the failure of a he­ating system are overlapping with automatic fault notifi­cations from the affected installations themselves. In se­parate notification systems the coordination is difficult to impossible. Our centralised service desk system can coor­dinate these contexts very well. Therefore, duplications of effort are avoided and detectors receive a well-foun­ded and satisfying feedback. A central and evaluable platform for all fault notifications is highly relevant for all further processes such as maintenance, lifecycle inspec­tions and investment decisions.

Important goals for help and service desks are the com­plete traceability of faults and notifications, the statistical evaluation and the exact assignment to the person res­ponsible.

It is precisely the last point, the assignment to the per­sons responsible which provides information on the reli­ability and stability of individual installations and machi­nes and the associated costs and risks.

Investment decisions can be substantiated and tested for efficiency during the further procedure.

This tool has established itself as a platform for transpa­rency in technical processes in many companies. Insights increasingly influence future investments and process adaptations.