the end of 2018.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 pre-
sents the current status of technology in the area of
tool-assisted energy management in SMEs. Section 3
discusses the procedure used to perform the require-
ments analysis for software support of the complete
EnvM/EM process. The concept derived from this
analysis is presented in Section 4. The paper con-
cludes with a summary and outlook on the continuing
work in the project.
2 TECHNOLOGICAL STATUS
AND RELATED WORK
The main tasks of industrial environmental infor-
mation systems (IEISs) are to provide information
and documentation, support evaluation and decision-
making, and enable control, planning, and monitoring
throughout the management process (Wohlgemuth,
2015). Software solutions are available for each of
these tasks, however, usually as separate, isolated ap-
plications or stand-alone systems (Heldt and Wohlge-
muth, 2009). Established definitions of IEISs, for ex-
ample (Wohlgemuth, 2015, S. 224), only require par-
tial support for environmental and sustainability ma-
nagement tasks, as no comprehensive solution exists.
The European norms for energy management
(ISO 50001) and environmental management (ISO
14001, 14004, 14006, 14031, 14044, and 14063) do
not provide explicit instructions for implementing and
executing EM/EnvM in specific cases, but rather per-
tain to the general process that is followed. Corre-
sponding handbooks such as (Bundesministerium f
¨
ur
Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit (BMU),
2012; S
¨
achsische Energieagentur SAENA GmbH,
2015; Umweltgutachterausschuss (UGA), 2011) pro-
vide organisational guidance and recommendations,
but do not offer any tool support. Additionally, SMEs
generally lack financial and human resources, as well
as knowledge and experience in the area of imple-
menting such systems (Eichhammer et al., 2011).
Software support — i.e., the use of IEISs — is the-
refore necessary for processing environmental and
energy data for administration, analysis, visualisation
and simulations (Hilty and Rautenstrauch, 1995).
Model-based approaches, such as that presented
in (R
¨
oßler et al., 2013), provide helpful support in
the form of a manual or reference process for imple-
menting energy management. Similar to the system
proposed in this paper, model-based approaches are
based on a detailed analysis of the requirements pre-
sented in the norms and therefore ensure a formally
valid implementation of energy management. Howe-
ver, they lack any tool-based support for analysis, vi-
sualisation, or simulations.
Currently, IEISs are mainly used to ensure legal
compliance, provide support for EnvM, and collect
and display data (Wohlgemuth, 2015). However, the
present trend is to take material aspects (raw materi-
als and energy consumption) into account alongside
the classical control parameters of the production si-
mulation in tactical and strategic problems (Wohlge-
muth, 2015). Accordingly, attempts are being made
to utilise and further develop pre-existing information
resources and applications in companies in order to
achieve this (Boß and Wohlgemuth, 2015). The open-
source tool “OpenResKit-Framework” has similar go-
als, but mainly concentrates on the integration of ex-
isting data and information (Boß and Wohlgemuth,
2015) and is therefore focused on providing informa-
tion and documentation (Wohlgemuth, 2015). In the
area of analysis and decision-making support, the tool
“e!Sankey” is used in conjunction with a Microsoft
Excel
R
table to visualise energy, material, or cost
flows (Boß and Wohlgemuth, 2015). Even the ap-
plication of the OpenResKit-Framework to learning
energy-efficiency networks (Schneider et al., 2014)
does not pursue a comprehensive approach to sup-
porting all aspects of the management process, but
instead focuses on the areas of information and do-
cumentation.
The QuiXel project, presented in this paper, at-
tempts to provide an all-inclusive approach to suppor-
ting EnvM and EM by addressing the areas of plan-
ning, data structuring, data acquisition, analysis, vi-
sualisation, and documentation. Guidelines that are
compliant with the European norms will also be pro-
vided within the system in the form of a platform-
integrated manual so that the necessary expertise is
always readily available without the need to consult
external resources.
3 PROCEDURE FOR
REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS
In order to assess the requirements for comprehensive
IT support of the entire EnvM/EM process in SMEs,
a model of the work packages necessary for obtaining
certification was first drafted based on the ISO 50001
(DIN, 2011) and ISO 14001 (DIN, 2015) norms. This
model is shown in Figure 1. The numbers of the work
packages correspond to the section numbers of the re-
spective norm.
In the next step, a refined model was created by
further detailing all work packages according to the
norms. This ensured that all necessary functions for
ICEIS 2018 - 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
188