Project partner SimPlan develops simulation component based on SimChain toolkit

Climate change and its significant consequences have raised an imperative need for wise management of energy resources and industrial environmental performance. The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, while having the biggest share of the total environmental burden caused by consumer products, still lacks the management methods and systems that can effectively assist this effort.

The e-SAVE project aims to develop the information infrastructure, applications and decision support tools to support operations and supply chain management and design decisions, taking into account environmental KPIs and the dynamic energy profile of products and processes. Furthermore, the project will support efficient information sharing and collaboration among supply chain partners in order to enable an end-to-end information flow, spanning a product’s life cycle.

Moreover, the possibility to automatically capture data regarding the dynamic energy profile of processes and products through sensors, automatic identification technologies, etc. will also be investigated.

The goal is to contribute to an energy-efficient supply chain by providing the system, services, collaboration platform and management tools that will help companies monitor, manage and share energy use and carbon footprint data in order to support operational as well as strategic decision making and design decisions.

In addition, e-SAVE utilizes the energy efficiency and carbon-footprint measures in a feedback loop to support both operational and strategic decision making and supply chain design decisions. Thus, e-SAVE will offer supply chain partners a powerful toolset to both monitor energy efficiency and carbon footprint across the supply chain, but also incorporate these measures into the decision making process and influence day-to-day operations (e.g. vehicle routing, replenishment schedules etc.) but also reshape their supply chain design where required (e.g. eliminate a warehouse or change distribution channel).

One important part of the toolset is going to be a supply chain simulation component built by SimPlan, based on the existing toolkit SimChain. It will enable the user to set up what-if scenarios, e.g. by adding or removing supply chain nodes, by modifying transport options, or by re-allocating products. In addition to typical logistics key performance indicators such as service level, costs for transportation and stock environmental indicators will be tracked and forecast in the simulation models.