Title: Managing the socio-technical energy system of industrial plants and buildings: the new tool 'BIEN'

Authors: Theodora C. Kouloura

Addresses: Civil Engineering Department, Democritus University of Thrace, 12 Vasilissis Sofias, GR 67100, Xanthie, Greece

Abstract: In this work a new tool for the sustainable energy management is introduced. This tool, labelled 'BIEN', is offered as a software package and it can be used for the managing and supervision of various industrial units by the end users. The used approach follows Ashby' law for the requisite variety, which states that only variety can absorb variety, and taking into account that in most cases of enterprise's management, the absorbing variety is limited to the changes of the enterprise's environment, it produces a software tool which acts as an appropriate attenuator. The way that this tool works is to point out the necessary directions to be followed, for the efficient sustainable management of the complex socio-technical energy system of an enterprise. Moreover, this tool can show the resulted situation after applying a proposed plan of modifications to an enterprise and as such it can be considered as a valuable managing tool for managers and decision-makers, as well as an indicative framework for external auditors.

Keywords: VSM tool; Beer; viable system model; sustainable energy management; industrial plants; buildings; sustainability; socio-technical energy systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASS.2012.052233

International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies, 2012 Vol.4 No.4, pp.217 - 226

Received: 09 Jul 2009
Accepted: 02 Nov 2009
Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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