Analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in the road freight transportation using simulation

Abstract The objective of this paper was to analyze the behavior of environmental and performance variables in the Lean Manufacturing versus Green Manufacturing context in a road freight transportation system. Thus, a survey analysis was carried out by applying a satisfaction questionnaire to evaluate the customers, workers and managers perception concerning some environmental issues. It was verified the possibility for managers to develop different sustainable strategies considering the type of commercial vehicle available in the company, the vehicle age and the eco-driving behavior among drivers. Discrete Event Simulation was also applied to investigate the behavior of typical scenarios of transport operations in the Supply Chain encompassing greenhouse gas emissions and transport time of operation routes. In order to verify which factors most influenced the emissions, an experimental project using simulation models was employed. Investigating the results, it could be seen that the behavior of the transport structures cannot be generalized, as different scenarios had different results on the performance of the Supply Chain when analyzing factors such as Types of delivery fleet, Age of the fleet and Driving style. It was also identified that some simulations that present low emission have greater transport time. Thus, the green consumer behavior will carry greater weight on manager’s decisions; this way, actions that meet the lean and green can be established in a way that both practices can add value to eco-efficiency or greater sustainability to the Supply Chain.