Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica

Supply chain modelling and managing, using timed coloured Petri nets: a case study

This paper aims at developing a new methodology for designing and managing a supply chain (SC) and, at the same time, for evaluating the performance of every stakeholder involved in a production chain. The methodology proposed has been applied to a footwear supply chain and is based on coloured Petri nets (CPNs). The supply chain analysed in this paper is a complex production system consisting of a network of manufacturers and service suppliers related to logistics systems that provide transportation and storage. The model developed uses coloured, timed Petri nets to represent a supply chain and it is such that resources are the Petri Net (PN) places, the tokens are jobs, orders and/or products, while the colours represent job attributes. These colours are used to encode different data types and values that are attached to tokens. A “coloured token” represents a specific production order or a certain amount of a particular material supplied. Thus, it can be processed in different ways and it can be easily localised within the CPN model. The use of coloured Petri nets allows companies to create a compact representation of states, actions and events of the modelled system. The particular structure of this network allows the designers the easy realisation of a simulator using an “object-oriented”, dedicated programming, which is a useful tool for developing what-if analyses.

Case Study: A Carbon Footprint Analysis in Textile Supply Chain

In this chapter a case study os analyzed. The research work focuses on the application of the life cycle assessment methodology to determine the carbon footprint of the different players involved in a supply chain of the textile sector. A case study of a product by a textile leader company was carried out. This study will demonstrate that, in the textile chain, the main contribution to the greenhouse effect is provided by the electrical and thermal energy used and by the transportation (since the different production phases are delocalized in a wide range that goes from South Africa, Italy, Romania, and all around the world, from the distribution center to the stores). A sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the impact of management choices such as: a change in the transportation modality, from airplane to boat; a combination of road and rail transportation; and a selection among suppliers that allows the firm to cut environmental impacts.

Integration of Design for Environmental Concepts in Product Life Cycle

In this chapter the most important Design for Environmental (DfE) concepts have been analyzed, taking into consideration the relations between Product Life Cycle aspects and Eco-Design process. Materials and methods have been proposed in order to analyze the integration between DfE aspects and Life Cycle Assessment techniques. A major benefit of the DfE methodology proposed in this work is the possibility to use LCA data both during new product development and when modifying old products, with the aim of continuously reducing the overall environmental impact of products during their life cycle. According to Crul and Diehl (Design for sustainability: a practical approach for developing economies. United Nations Environment Programme, Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, Technische Universiteit Delft, 2006) we think the introduction of Sustainable Products as a process-oriented change in the mental attitude and activities of a business, embedded in the process of product innovation. It requires an understanding of the product’s environmental impact and an ability to envisage the options available to make improvements in this area.

LCA Process in the Eco-Design Process

This chapter provides the main concepts of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. LCA process is a systematic, phased approach and consists of four components: goal definition and scoping, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation. Moreover a comparative Life Cycle Assessment between two different models of domestic refrigerators has been carried out in this chapter using the eco-indicator methodology. The study of life cycle enabled the analysis and the subsequent comparison of the results about environmental impact, focusing with special attention on those of energetic nature, coming from the comparison between a refrigerator (Old Model) and its successive corresponding model (New Model), which was structurally modified by means of a product’s redesign.

Case Study: Development of a Sustainable Product Life cycle in Manufacturing Firms

This chapter gives a case study for integrating Design for Environment (DfE) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques both into new product development and into the process of redesigning a set of existing products. The case study explains the reasons for developing DfE in general, and pays particular attention to a specific, chosen product, a class of electrical distribution boards, to illustrate the concept. The main process steps in the development of the DfE are outlined, and the development of a LCA that satisfies the requirements of the ISO 14040 standard is illustrated. This work was developed thanks to the collaboration between the Sustainability Affairs Department of ABB Italia and the Department of Energy Studies of Marche Polytechnic University. The aim of the firm was to create a procedure based on the integration of DfE and LCA methodologies to allow the assessment of improvement, in terms of environmental and economic impact, which could be attributed to a different assembly layout for the “electrical distribution boards” set of products.

DfE Procedures in the Development of a More Sustainable Supply Chain

This chapter focuses on design for environment (DfE) procedures for developing a more sustainable supply chain. In order to effectively reduce the sustainability impacts of products, the supply chain aspect of product manufacture needs to be incorporated. With the exception of products manufactured in a direct business-to-consumer relationship, most products with significant sustainability impacts, e.g. cars or electronics goods, are manufactured using a number of companies involved in a supply chain. To achieve sustainable supply chain, environmentally conscious design (eco-design) or DfE is becoming an increasingly important topic (Den Haag Brezet H, and Van Hemel C Eco-design: a promising approach to sustainable production and consumption. UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Paris, 1997)

Environmental Aspects in Strategic Decisions

This Chapter shows how environmental aspect could be taken into consideration during a Supply Chain design process. An integrated sustainability strategy for SCM is the approach taken in the research streams: reverse logistics, product stewardship, and green SCM. On the supply side, suppliers are chosen, developed, and monitored based on their compliance with international codes of conduct, and this provides sufficient comfort to industrial buyers, who want to know about the origin of raw material and components (Mamic 2005). The products are designed for the environment by eliminating hazardous or harmful materials and making recycling and disposal easy (Srivastava 2007); the current systems and solutions can already cope with these circumstances. The production process is organised to reduce waste of materials, emission of gases, and polluted water, and minimize the consumption of non-renewable energy resources. Transportation and distribution is organized to minimize total mileage, maximize capacity utilization by consolidation of shipments, and to use environmentally friendly transport modes when possible; this is seen as coherent with the logic of efficient distribution systems. The reverse logistics system is organized to maximize the value creation of the returned products, whether it is end-of-life products that are recycled or remanufactured or its commercial returns, which are taken back to the market as soon as possible (Jayaraman and Luo 2007).

Design a Sustainable Supply Chain

The design of a more sustainable supply chain is the main topic of this chapter. Recently [Halldorsson A, Kotzab H, Skjott-Larsen T (2009) Logist Res 1:83–94] raised an important question: how could sustainability be integrated in the SCM approach—is sustainability coherent, complementary, or contradictory to the traditional SCM approach? This chapter includes a discussion on the meaning of sustainability when it comes to SCM as well as a suggestion of how to incorporate sustainability into the SCM concept. The character of this paper is conceptual and based on a literature review and secondary data analysis of illustrative case examples. Just as economic globalization creates opportunities and poses challenges to our ability to formulate macroeconomic policies, so does environmental globalization. The opportunity for business profit is an additional motive for the companies. Relevant legislations in developed countries derive from the social demand for environmental protection and the perspective that the manufacturers should be made responsible for their products “from cradle to grave” has dominated. However, it can be claimed that the efforts made so far are rather limited, while nobody would argue against the need for a global approach to the situation. Developed countries or leader firms, mainly, have established environmental policies for product recovery. The issue of how effective these policies are is debatable. The scope of this chapter is to identify systematically environmental principles for the design and operation of SC.

Sustainable Product Assessment Tools

The analysis of sustainable product assessment tools is the topic of chap. 4. Sustainable product assessment tools are intended for the selection and prioritization of the potential environmental improvement of a product (Tischner et al. How to do EcoDesign?—A guide for environmentally and economically sound design. Verlag Form Germany, 2000). They also support product designs and the development of ideas and target specifications. Disparate impacts such as resource use, occupational and environmental health risks, and global environmental impacts have to be aggregated to a single score or at least lead to a single decision. This need to cope with trade-offs between different kinds of environmental impacts has lead to often ad-hoc decision-making rules. By integrating social and environmental objectives and performance criteria into the strategic and operational decisions in their supply chains, the firms can make the appropriate balance between costs, service, environmental and social impacts.

Methods for Weighting DfE Choices in the Development of a More Sustainable Supply Chain

In this chapter we proposed a procedure which, by combining the life cycle analysis (LCA) technique and an appropriate use of quality function deployment (QFD) type multi-criteria matrices, tries to define design specifications for all the stakeholders involved in a supply chain: customers, manufacturers, suppliers, suppliers of the suppliers, etc. In particular by combining LCA techniques and by using the QFD multi-criteria matrices, an “environmental compromise” can be reached. In this work the QFD matrices have been developed in a new way using an iterative process that involves the whole supply chain starting from the product life cycle, taking into consideration the machines that make the product and their components. This methodology is compatible with the requirements of the various stakeholders, suppliers, manufacturers and, clients, involved in the supply chain. Using the proposed procedure, a specific supply chain for packaging systems for liquid food substances (beverage cartons) was studied. Life cycle thinking must influence the environmental management of firms which deal with packaging systems involving all areas of their activity, starting from ways of designing the product and finding raw materials, to packaging and machine production operations and even to the management of the post-consumption/disposal phase.