• Energy Research

Abstract The MAESTRI Total Efficient Framework (MTEF) is a recent holistic concept that congregates four complementary dimensions: Efficiency Framework; IoT Platform; Management System and Industrial Symbiosis. MTEF promotes the development of strategies for continuous performance improvement towards a more sustainable manufacturing. The Efficiency Framework supports the integrated assessment of operations efficiency and eco-efficiency, being measured by a new concept: Total Efficiency Index (TEI). The simultaneous assessment of the environmental, economic and efficiency performance of complex production systems is only possible with a digitalized production system, which is aligned with Industry 4.0 paradigm. Thus, with TEI original dashboards and graphical diagram, both static and dynamic assessments of efficiency vs. eco-efficiency can be analyzed. This paper details the fundaments of the Efficiency Framework and TEI, and presents an application case study from the metalworking sector, where the achieved results are discussed for the new concept validation.

This paper presents an overview of the work under development within MAESTRI EU-funded collaborative project. The MAESTRI Total Efficiency Framework (MTEF) aims to advance the sustainability of manufacturing and process industries by providing a management system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform and methodology. The MTEF is based on four pillars: (a) an effective management system targeted at process continuous improvement; (b) Efficiency assessment tools to support improvements, optimisation strategies and decision support; (c) Industrial Symbiosis paradigm to gain value from waste and energy exchange; (d) an Internet-of-Things infrastructure to support easy integration and data exchange among shop-floor, business systems and tools.

To foster the implementation of Industrial Symbiosis, several support tools have been developed to facilitate the dissemination of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) and the engagement of stakeholders; the establishment of exchanges between companies, the so-called synergies; and the assessment of impacts and benefits. Despite this, it has been found that stakeholders still do not have a clear envisioning of the required steps to the technical implementation of synergies and there are no facilitating tools, such as methodologies, frameworks, modelling tools, and databases, among others, that aid to technically support decision-making of synergy implementation. Thus, the goal of this paper is to present a dedicated framework that provides a set of guidelines and defines a technical viability analysis to support the implementation of potential synergies, which can be used and replicated by any IS practitioner. It comprehends a methodological approach to assess the compliance of a given synergy opportunity; its characterization concerning the definition of the necessary intermediary steps for the technical implementation; and an assessment of the technical feasibility of the synergy. The implementation of the framework allowed the successful technical validation of the studied synergy opportunities, providing a final technical viability assessment that can support decision-making of technology selection and synergy implementation.