Saving Energy with NREL's Material Flows through Industry (MFI) Tool (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video "Saving Energy with NREL's Material Flows through Industry (MFI) Tool."

Manufacturing is central to the DNA of our nation. The U.S. manufacturing sector is steadily evolving as next-generation technologies gain traction and change the marketplace.

With increased transparency and analysis, many of these technologies can reduce their material and energy consumption, helping ensure the manufacturing industry stays efficient and sustainable.

And it's as simple as M-F-I.

NREL's MFI tool, also known as the Materials Flows through Industry Tool, quite literally models the U.S. industrial sector’s supply chain. The tool determines what is needed to make a final product, and models the supply chain all the way back to the material flows and energy inputs needed during the raw material extraction phase.

The tool calculates every necessary step of production, and once a full supply chain is built out, it could contain hundreds of small material inputs and energy flows. And MFI can display them all.

This mine-to-materials analysis can be applied to a wide range of manufacturing scenarios, identifying and analyzing opportunities to reduce the energy and carbon intensities of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

And by reducing energy use and emissions, manufacturers are able to increase their workforces and returns on investments while decreasing their overall costs and environmental impacts.

It's a pretty powerful tool.

And not only is this analysis easy to do via MFI, it's also free.

So, create your account online to build and analyze your own customized MFI supply chain model!

https://www.nrel.gov/manufacturing/mfi-modeling-tool.html  

MFI is funded through the Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office.