Environmental activity based cost using discrete event simulation

Discrete event simulation (DES) provides engineers with a flexible modeling capability for extensive analysis of a production flow and its dynamic behavior. Activity based costing (ABC) modeling can provide additional knowledge about the monetary costs related to the manufacturing processes in DES. In addition, ABC modeling has been proposed as a tool for environmental impact analysis. Thus, previous studies have separately brought ABC into DES and ABC into environmental impact analysis. Bringing all three areas together, an ABC environmental simulation could provide deeper understanding about environmental impacts in the manufacturing processes than a regular Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. This paper proposes to use ABC modeling in conjunction with DES to perform a more detailed economic and environmental impact cost analysis. It is emphasized that the time to perform both analysis in one simulation is shorter or equal to perform them separately. Moreover, the approach can resolve some LCA problems.