The cluster of excellence "Energy-efficient Product and Process Innovations in Production Engineering" (eniPROD) aims at achieving a national and international visible contribution to the realization of an almost emission-free production while increasing the resource efficiency, in particular reducing the specific demand for energy. The goals will be attained by conjoining the existing excellent groups of researchers at the Chemnitz University of Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology and by a strategic orientation of their individual research profiles towards the future-oriented focus on an energy-efficient production. The project is driven by the vision of an energy self-sufficient plant based on the pillars efficiency in production, sustainability by total energy management and the use of renewable resources.

The project related focus of the Chair of Management Accounting and Control is the development of economic approaches and instruments for providing energy-related information and supporting a combined energetic and economic balancing and evaluation. They are basis to the design and controlling of a cost- and energy-efficient production. The head of the chair as well as five scientific assistants are involved in four of eniPROD’s fields of action.

1. Product Development: We create a single- and multi-period energy- and cost-related information system with tools for energy cost accounting and energy-related life cycle costing as well as a methodology for energy-related cost-efficient product development using target costing and target energy management.
2. Production Systems: We develop an instrument for energy-related life cycle costing and life cycle cost analysis. It contains methods for total costs and the acquisition of energy, an energy-economic analysis as well as the evaluation of production systems’ profitability.
3. Process Chains: We analyze the drivers of energy consumption and costs of technical processes and process chains in order to develop a suitable instrument for cost data acquisition and (energy) cost management.
4. Logistics and Factory Planning: We strive for a methodological integration of the aim of energy efficiency with the plant design process. The tools to arise enhance existing methods, e.g. multi-criteria decision making, and underpin the design of an integrated, energy related performance measurement system.