Sustainability toolkit for simulation-based logistics decisions

As sustainability related issues, such as energy consumption and environmental impact issues are becoming a more integrated part of operational and long-term planning decisions, simulation modeling and analysis tools are needed to aid in the decision-making process. In this paper we introduce the concept of a simulation-based sustainability toolkit and present a prototype of one portion of the toolkit that is being developed for modeling and simulating sustainability aspects of logistics and transportation systems. The sustainability simulation toolkit contains a flexible framework to enable the simulation modeling and analysis of sustainability-related factors and performance measures. This toolkit is designed for ease of implementation, so decision-makers can have sustainability measures as readily available as traditional performance measures when making logistics and transportation decisions.