Ilaria,

I think it would be worth looking within the proceedings of the winter simulation conference and if you use search terms such as sustainability and manufacturing I imagine you will get some hits and answer your questions.

all the best,

Kathy

Dear Ilaria,

It is very critical to determine some key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the changes. In this regard, you can do a literature review and find which factors are more critical for what you mentioned in your question (e.g. total production cost and cycle time for economic or CO2 footprint for environmental perspective). Following are some required steps:

1. Construct the current model and run it using the real data. Use KPIs as the model output (e.g. cycle time). Run the model for many times and check the report of KPIs.

2. Construct the new model, run it and check the same KPIs.

3. Compare the outputs. Is there any significant improvement?

4. Do a cost/benefit analysis. Can the achieved benefits justify the assigned costs?

5. Do a qualitative analysis (e.g. social perspectives) on the achieved benefits.

(Suggested software: Arena or ED)

You can check the following paper :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260704038_Scenario-based_simulation_in_production-distribution_network_under_demand_uncertainty_using_ARENA

Article Scenario-based simulation in production-distribution network...

There is currently a group of researchers in Berlin (Technical University) dealing with issues of sustainable manufacturing, production, and value creation. Have a look at this page for further information: http://www.sustainable-manufacturing.net/home

Hello,

I have two years ago finished my doctoral thesis "INFLUENCE OF STRUCTURE OF MANUFACTURING SYSTEM AND AMOUNT OF INVESTMENT ON PRODUCTION COSTS ". I used discrete event simulation (Tecnomatix Plan Simulation) and Life Cycle Costing method as a basis for generation of production costs and make my own method for economic and investment analysis.

The real problem was the generation of simulation models for real production, because I was trying to capture all events in production (setting-up, processing, transporting, etc.) respectively costs (costs of labour, machinery, tools, emulsions, energy, transportation, quality control, storage, maintenance, montage, etc.)  and projected it on time of investment repayment.

I am not sure my answer will suit your expectations since it is not explicitly about simulation but a paper from (Trentesaux and Prabhu, 2014) is entitled "Sustainability in Manufacturing Operations Scheduling: Stakes, Approaches and Trends". Also, some papers deal with energy or green manufacturing where common approaches are to consider global energy consumption of the system, peak consumptions, or Time Of Use (TOU). Perhaps that it could be interesting to read this kind of papers (some of them are referenced in the paper mentioned above).

I beleive economic impact of using new equipment/technology/production system is measuring productivity (labour, material, energy and capital). Environmental impact is energy consumption (electricity ->carbon footprint) which you can find out by simulation. potential of simulation is significant if it involves stochastic variables, scheduling and dispatching rules etc. For drawbacks , refer this  journal 'Warnings about simulation' by J Banks and L Chwif.

I do cost/benefit simulations for years. 

1. Get critic variables that affects the economic value of the production system.

2. Develop a stochastic model that captures realistic settings.

3. Run simulations and do parameter analysis.

4. Give possibilities and extreme values such as VaR. 

Good Luck.