Publications

Guide Resource Efficiency

There is a multitude of methods and tools that exist for different questions and problems and can be applied for the implementation of resource efficiency in the business. The Resource Efficiency Guide helps you to tackle resource efficiency measures in your business step by step and helps you to find the right method or tool for each step.

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Brochures

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Brief Analysis No. 31: Digital technologies for developing resource-efficient products and services

Via simulation instead of prototypes: Digital technologies simplify the development of products and services in many ways. Simultaneously, companies face the challenge of dealing with the complexity of data management. The following brief analysis "Digital technologies for the development of resource-efficient products and services" points out how companies can save natural resources already in product development through digitisation, "Industrie 4.0" and innovative methods.

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Brief Analysis

Brief Analysis No. 31: Digital technologies for developing resource-efficient products and services

Brief Analysis No. 30: Resource efficiency via production planning and lean production

The concept of a lean, holistic production system – with the essential goal of avoiding waste – has been known since the early 1990s. The reason is that a holistic approach reveals numerous savings potentials for material and energy as well as possible strategies for increasing resource efficiency in companies. The brief analysis "Resource efficiency via production planning and Lean Production" therefore provides an overview of which production methods SMEs can use to save material and energy and thus act more resource-efficiently.

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Brief Analysis

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Brief Analysis No. 29: New business models and resource efficiency

The worlds of business and industry have undergone some significant changes in recent years. Established institutions are being supplanted by competitors with completely new business models. Online lexicons are replacing encyclopaedias, the largest accommodation platform doesn’t own a single one of the properties it offers. New competitors with innovative business ideas are surging into the market, largely as a result of digitisation. Alongside the challenges of a world that continues to change at an ever-faster rate, these developments can present far-reaching opportunities when it comes to industry and resource efficiency.

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Brief Analysis

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Brief Analysis No. 27: Resource efficiency in trade and logistics

Both the retail and logistics sectors consume large quantities of natural resources, especially raw materials and energy. The transport of goods plays a significant role in this, but so do other factors such as the construction and operation of retail. The aim of this brief analysis is to provide companies in the retail and logistics sectors with suggestions for resourceefficient business process design. The strategies, measures and practical examples presented here are also intended to help tap additional potential in terms of resource efficiency.

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Brief Analysis

Ecological and Economic Assessment of Resource Use - Cleaning Technologies in industrial Production

Cleanliness requirements and the associated residual dirt specifications have risen sharply in the area of industrial parts manufacturing in recent years. This is forcing companies to no longer view the cleaning process as a low-priority component of the production chain, but rather as a value-adding processing step. Here, resource efficiency potentials can be tapped, which reduce material and energy and at the same time lead to cost savings.

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Studies

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Ecological and economic Assessment of Resource Use: Additive Manufacturing Processes in industrial Production

Additive processes as a key technology of digitisation are considered to be faster and more cost-effective. Among other things, because less scrap is produced and less waste is generated during manufacturing. Using a specific case study, the study compares the resource consumption of an additive manufacturing process with a conventional manufacturing process.

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Studies

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Brief Analysis No. 26: Deconstruction in Building Construction – Current Practice and Potential for Resource Conservation

More than half of the total German waste volume is accounted for by construction and demolition waste from the building industry. This is reason enough to include the demolition and dismantling of buildings in the planning of a building from the very beginning, in order to reduce the volume of waste and conserve natural resources. The brief analysis shows the current practice of demolishing buildings and describes the potential for resource conservation in the construction industry.

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Brief Analysis

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The Easy Way to Resource Efficiency – The management guide for your business

The management guide shows concisely what resource efficiency means for a company and how it can benefit from it. A catalog of measures explains the most important starting points that management should address in order to integrate material- and energy-efficient processes into the company.

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Brochures

The Easy Way to Resource Efficiency – The management guide for your business

Our Mission: Resource Efficiency

The VDI ZRE develops instruments that help enterprises implement measures for higher resource effciency. It was launched in 2009 as a cooperative project of the former Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conversation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the VDI. As the competence centre for resource effciency, the VDI ZRE works at the interface between business and science and pools know-how gleaned from both theory and practice.

Download PDF | 3.6 MB

Brochures

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Ecological and economic Assessment of Resource Use: Efficient electric motors in industrial production

Electric motors and motor systems play a significant role in energy efficiency. They account for approx. 40 % of worldwide energy consumption and could contribute to a doubling of the electricity consumption by 2030 if no further saving measures are taken. Choosing a high energy efficiency class is not enough to reduce losses and consumption since the power consumption differs greatly in the usually dominating use phase in the end customer’s application (varying load profiles, speeds etc.). The associated ecological and economic effects accordingly depend on several boundary conditions.

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Studies

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Brief Analysis No. 23: Resource Efficiency in the Value Chain

Resource efficiency measures can be implemented at various points in the production process. The potentials are manifold. However, the increasingly complex networked production economy no longer requires only selective but also comprehensive resource efficiency measures, those that work across processes as well as across company and business boundaries.

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Brief Analysis

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Brief Analysis No. 22: Resource Efficiency Potentials of Industrial Estates

The efficient use of energy, materials, water and space not only saves resources, but also costs for the purchase and disposal of waste, residual materials and wastewater, for example. The networking of companies in an industrial park or with the surrounding residential areas offers many opportunities to save resources. Residential areas in particular offer high efficiency potentials as heat consumers.

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Brief Analysis

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Competitive Advantage: Resource Efficiency

The brochure Competetive Advantage: Resource Efficiency gives an introduction into the meaning of resource efficiency and its strategic and economic advantages.

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Brochures

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Ecological and economical Assessment of Resource Use: Stationary Energy Storage Systems in industrial Production

Stationary energy storage systems are a necessary component of a future power supply system with high shares of renewable energies. Used in decentralized industrial applications, they help to increase resource efficiency while minimizing the costs of power supply. Storage solutions for the short to medium-term storage of electrical energy are therefore seen as a contribution to the success of the energy transition being driven forward in Germany.

Download PDF | 1.6 MB

Studies

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