Patent ID: 7103452

Claim:
A method for real-time targeting and monitoring, performing gap analysis, identifying and diagnosing statistically significant deviations, and identifying corrective actions for the energy performance of manufacturing facilities comprising: utilizing a customizable software application and computerized system to perform the following tasks: develop a neural network model to generate a target for a manufacturing facility's plant wide overall energy using current production rates and ambient conditions, and develop a single neural network model or linear models to generate targets for departmental standard parameter performance indicators, dynamically adjusted for current production and ambient conditions, and identify operating parameters that are determined to have the greatest statistical significance on the department standard parameters and over which the facility's operators have control through their actions, and develop and populate a database of the software application; and enter actual energy usages and costs, department operating rates, and ambient conditions into said software application; and run the application's software to calculate target energy usages and costs, statistical analysis of deviations between actual energy usage and cost and target energy usage and cost, and perform a gap analysis of actual versus target energy usage and cost values; and diagnose the cause of statistically significant deviations and identify actions to be taken to reduce the deviations; and display calculated values on performance report of the application; and store calculated results in the application's database; and electronically export the calculated results and performance report, to production departments, a management information system, or other electronically connected destination and/or print these as hard copy reports.