OSRAM: the OEMS system for the monitoring and management of electrical energy, compressed air, methane and technical gases

OSRAM, based in Munich (Germany), is one of the two world leading companies in the lightning industry.OSRAM is one of the two leading light manufacturers in the world. The company’s portfolio covers the entire value chain from components – including lamps, opto semiconductors like light-emitting diodes (LED) – to electronic control gears as well as complete luminaires, light management systems and lighting solutions.

The company, which is internationally oriented, had around 39,000 employees worldwide at the end of the fiscal year 2012 and generated a revenue of 5.4 billion Euros in that year. More than 70% of its revenue come from energy-efficient products. The company’s business activities have been focusing on light – and hence on quality of life – for over 100 years. OSRAM Italy nowadays is a solid commercial and industrial company based in Milan and with two production sites in Treviso and Bari, the most important Italian factories of electronic ballasts, fluorescent lamps and LED modules. The attention to the environment from OSRAM is expressed not only in the production of environmentally friendly products and production processes.

The environmental sustainability has always been the focus of strategy in OSRAM. Developing and designing eco-compatible products is an asset as well as producing with real environmentally sustainable processes. The environmental compatibility is also a value and a commitment that the company has included in the Global Care program. This last defines in depth the guidelines of the Corporate Social Responsibility both in the environmental and social sphere.

In line with the corporate philosophy of OSRAM, aimed at environmental sustainability, the establishment of Treviso decided to set up an Electrex system for monitoring energy consumption with particular attention to the production plants. This decision is based on the awareness that the energies play an increasingly important role in the future of production and that their control is the basic condition for their rational use.

The idea becomes a "best practice" and in short time the electricity consumption of the plant it is measured through Electrex instruments and divided, depending on the case, for production line, office, or by type of service.

After observing the data available, it was found that in order to produce the compressed air necessary for productive activities it is needed about 1/3 of the total energy consumed by the whole plant.

Therefore it was decided to start a project for the automatic management of the compressor room. The compressors will be switched on automatically just before the start of production activities and turned off immediately at the end. During the working day their use will be managed according to the demands of the departments and the performance characteristics of the different machines.

The positive result of the systematic use of resources was so clear that it was decided to extend the coverage of this best practice.

After installing the first 100 Electrex instruments, it was realized, that in the company was not available the know how necessary to the correct use the data collected. In addition, a system capable of creating awareness in relation to energy consumption and therefore generate possible savings was missing. It was necessary to integrate the data provided by the instruments with the topology of the electrical distribution system.

The next stage was to connect the instruments in a network and to develop an integrated system for the collection of the data on the electrical energy consumption.The requirements set for this project are initially the automatic subdivision on monthly basis of the consumptions per each cost center, the historic profile of all the consumptions, friendly usability of the data collected from multiple users, scalability and modularity of the system.
The result is an internal system called OEMS (OSRAM Energy Monitoring System) which is developed over time, revised and enhanced with new reports accessible via web browser.
L 'OEMS currently consists of 9 serial lines to which are connected about 125 Electrex instruments.

Diagram of the Electrex measuring instruments network

From each of the instruments used for the monitoring of electrical parameters is possible to get information on:

1. Voltage
2. Current
3. Cos ϕ
4. Active power
5. Reactive power
6. Active Energy
7. Reactive Energy

The simple and flexible structure of the system has also allowed the integration with devices for measuring the flow rate of fluids, which is normally performed from "less intelligent" instruments.

Taking advantage of the integrated digital inputs, of which are equipped with the Electrex instruments, it was possible to connect to several meters with pulse output for monitoring 8 points among compressed air and nitrogen, 6 points for methane and the mains of all technical gases. All this has allowed to change the point of view. Within the plant, OEMS is no longer considered a simple tool for the subdivision of the costs, but a system of monitoring and controlling of the use of electricity, compressed air, methane and all the technical gases.

These parameters are updated every five minutes and it is possible to observe the aggregate values ​​of minimum, maximum and average value in a time interval selected by the user. Reports can be either graphical or tabular and can be exported (eg pdf, csv, xls, ..) in order to be further processed or saved.

Besides the possibility to observe the measures of a single instrument is possible, to compare between each other similar paramenters or derived parameters from real measurements or consider the same parameter in two different time intervals. This last analysis is very useful in case the need is to confront a the trend of a parameter before and after an intervention of energy saving.

Reports and diagrams

The OEMS systems beside other features allows the sending of reports automatically via e-mails to multiple recipients.

The chart view of electricity consumption for each manufacturing area provides an immediate picture of the distribution of consumption among the various departments

Thanks to the integrated collection of electrical parameters and fluid flow rates is possible to correlate the electrical consumption and the production, for example, of the compressed air.

In doing so:

1. It is obtained, in real-time, the €/m³ cost  

2. It is monitored the performance of the whole system

Compressed air chart

In the last 12 months, the awareness of having a system operating and usable by all, allows the management to set standards of energy saving and fund specific targeted activities. Among this last ones can be mentioned three Kaizen Event for the analysis and the decrease in the consumption of compressed air in the production lines and a detailed study on the uses of nitrogen in production processes.

Weekly consumption of nitrogen before and after rationalization measures.

Therefore, considering the policy of the OSRAM group, in the Treviso facility were set targets for energy savings, but also related to responsible consumption of environmental resources.

Therefore, the future prospects involved several fronts as the long-term control on the efficiency of the actions undertaken, the definition of new targets year by year for reducing consumptions, the extension and configuration of the system for the achievement of the ISO 50001 certification.

It will be also implemented a power quality monitoring, at a general level and also locally, with the objective of minimizing the number of interruptions of production services.

With regard to electrical energy some older instruments already present have recently been replaced with Electrex Energy Analyzer model X3M, capable of providing information on the quality of energy, micro-interruptions and harmonic analysis.

Part of the work will be addressed to the definition of performance ratios between energy use and output of the system. Last but not least it is expected also a strengthening of the system of reporting and notification.