Modeling Green Logistics Agostino G. Bruzzone MISS DIPTEM University of Genoa Email agostino@itim.unige.it URL http://st.itim.unige.it Alberto Tremori MAST srl Email alberto.tremori@mastsrl.eu URL www.mastsrl.eu Marina Massei, Federico Tarone Simulation Team Email {marina.massei, federico.tarone}@simulationteam.com URL www.simulationteam.com Abstract This paper propose an innovative simulation model based on web technologies devoted to analyze environmental impact of the whole supply chain. The authors developed a whole framework for collecting data from different users including good producers, logistics operators and retailers by a web questionnaire; this service is automatically integrated with a simulator that evaluate the green aspects of each case by self generating a model for this specific case and providing synthetic results; in addition the green log model developed allows to create interactively very complex supply chain. The paper propose the general architecture of the green log model and an example for supporting its validation and verification. 1. Introduction Logistics represents a complex framework involving many different activities and many interaction with all the internal processes and external supply chain operations [6]. Often logistics is restricted just to transport problems, but in fact this subject is much extended. In reality Logistics includes all the actions needed to support the goods/products delivery and it is very strongly connected to issues such as packaging, re- packaging, network definition, supply chain concepts etc.[9] Obviously the logistics framework and the related operations have several environmental impacts that affect sustainability and represent indirect costs and consumption of resources[22]. It is very important from this point of view to outline that the environmental impacts are not limited only to emissions due to product transportation, but also to waste disposal, resource use (i.e. water and energy) and infrastructure effects (i.e. warehouses, logistics platforms, etc. ) [20]. From several years it was introduced the term “green logistics”, however this subject originally was very strongly related to qualitative considerations devoted to improve the sustainability of logistics, vice versa this project is devoted to the development of new models to support quantitative analysis and to measure the real impact of the whole supply chain [1][24]. In fact to measure environmental impacts it is necessary to consider a wide set of different elements that sometime are not easy to be recombined; in fact the conceptual model need to include direct and indirect emissions of different types as well as estimation of other waste disposals (i.e. rubber due to tire consumption) and infrastructure effects (i.e. highway or rail occupancy)[17][25]. A simulator devoted to estimate the environmental impact of the supply chain needs to represent the different processes as well as the different phenomena affecting these issues, in addition the sustainability analysis needs to be combined with costs, efficiency and quality evaluations in order to be comparable from industrial point of view[8][12]. The authors developed a model, titled Green Log (Green Logistics Simulator); in fact Green Log is based on new models developed in order to study these aspects; this research was motivated by the “Italian Green Logistics Initiative”: a project born as a join venture between Industry, Academy and Governmental Institutions. Main goal of “Italian Green Logistics Initiative Project” is to guarantee “greening” improvements for the logistics [18][19]; this goal for being achieved requires the development of environmental impact quantitative estimation all over the supply chain based on simulation models and solution 2009 Third Asia International Conference on Modelling & Simulation 978-0-7695-3648-4/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE DOI 10.1109/AMS.2009.97 543