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This study analyzes the sustainability of the circular economy model on winter road maintenance. Winter road maintenance involves plowing snow, spreading abrasives, and then sweeping and collecting the remaining abrasives at the end of the winter season. Traditionally, in the linear approach, the collected sweepings are landfilled, which incurs landfilling costs for resources that could be reused. To address this issue, we consider the option of recycling sweepings for use in the following winter seasons. We develop a discrete-event simulation model that estimates the economic and environmental benefits of this option. Using data from a case study of a highway in Quebec, Canada, the model shows that introducing circular economy practices in winter road maintenance results in less material going to landfills, lower costs, less use of aggregates from virgin materials, and lower CO2 emissions compared to the linear approach. A subsequent sensitivity analysis reveals that the quantity of sweepings collected greatly influences the outcomes.

Quebec, a province in Canada, is well positioned in the global bioeconomy. Its regions are overflowing with forest, agricultural crops or other organic residues that can be recovered and c...

This study deals with subject sustainability assessment for industrial parks which are seen as systems of interrelated companies and infrastructures. Although sustainability was introduced into mainstream policy discourse several decades ago, it remains complex to assess, and thus to improve in an integrated way. This is particularly true for such elaborate structures as industrial parks. However, the literature has made little effort to present tools for industrial parks managers to take decisions towards sustainability. The paper develops a sustainability assessment framework aimed at industrial parks' managers. The model is based on a multi-criteria compromise aggregation principle and relies on a preliminary systemic deployment of industrial park sustainability. The presented assessment uses a double aggregation mechanism using the weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) and the Choquet integral (CI) to account for the interrelations between stakeholders involved in an industrial park. This double aggregation results in two level of assessment, offering a more comprehensive view of the examined industrial park. A first level of assessment allows managers to control and improve the performance of their industrial parks in each pillar of sustainability. The second level is the assessment of the overall sustainability, which supports the managers' analysis of their strategy to achieve sustainability. As an illustration, the model is used to assess the sustainability of a Canadian industrial park. Application of the model shows that the completion of the studied industrial park's action plan results in reaching a 54% sustainability performance considering the managers' long-term sustainability strategy and that their vision of sustainability moderately favors the simultaneous satisfaction of economic criteria with environmental or social criteria. These results illustrates the capacity of the model to guide managers in the sustainable development of their industrial parks.

Forest industry plays an important role in global economy and has significant influences in our lives and the environment that we live in. With the rapid advancement of digital technologies and industrial transformations towards Industry 4.0, similar trend has been found in the forest industry and especially on its forest procurement side. Forestry 4.0 has been proposed as research initiatives in recent years. However, publications have largely focused on the digital technologies. This article is aimed at presenting a framework to provide a holistic view of Forestry 4.0 from a forest supply chain perspective. The framework consists of four major components including the digital technologies pertinent to each of the supply chain business activities; the network infrastructure; the next generation system intelligence; and the collaborative forest supply chain digital ecosystem. These components are essential for the forest industry transformation to become truly interconnected among its supply chain actors. Some economic, environmental, and social expected benefits of Forestry 4.0 are discussed as well as potential impacts and challenges. Resumo: A indústria florestal desempenha um papel importante na economia global e tem influências significativas em nossas vidas e no meio ambiente em que vivemos. O rápido avanço das tecnologias digitais e as transformações industriais em direção à Indústria 4.0 também tem afetado a indústria florestal, principalmente os processos relacionados às compras florestais. A silvicultura 4.0 tem sido alvo de iniciativas de pesquisa nos últimos anos. No entanto, as publicações concentraram-se amplamente nas tecnologias digitais. Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar um framework para fornecer uma visão holística da Silvicultura 4.0 a partir de uma perspectiva da cadeia de suprimentos florestal. O framework consiste em quatro componentes principais, incluindo as tecnologias digitais pertinentes a cada uma das atividades de negócios da cadeia de suprimentos; a infraestrutura da rede; a inteligência do sistema de próxima geração; e o ecossistema digital da cadeia de suprimentos florestais colaborativa. Esses componentes são essenciais para que a transformação da indústria florestal, na direção de uma verdadeira interconexão entre todos os atores da cadeia de suprimentos. Alguns benefícios econômicos, ambientais e sociais esperados do Silvicultura 4.0 são discutidos, bem como os impactos e desafios potenciais.

International audience

In developed countries, business and industrial areas are challenged by various issues such as air pollution, waste handling, resource consumption, infrastructure aging and adequate land rarefaction. Subsequent to the introduction of sustainable development and industrial ecology, the idea to create Eco-Industrial Parks based upon the exchange of resources has been acknowledged as a promising strategy to address these issues. The creation of a materials and energy exchange network through processes coupling, also called industrial symbiosis, is achievable in mainly heavy industrial complexes. Business parks with “lighter” industry or service-based companies can improve their sustainability through different approaches. Other types of collaborations can be envisaged such as shared services for the employees and companies, collective logistics or joint research and development. Moreover, reflections could also be orientated towards the park's design and infrastructure planning. From those observations, a new type of Eco-Industrial Park is introduced: the mixed-use ecopark. The mixed-use ecopark is a more accessible archetype, better suited to the case of business parks with service-based companies. Arguing that the mixed-use ecopark is systemic, a conceptual framework is proposed following Le Moigne's systemic modeling approach. Systemic modeling describes the mixed-use ecopark through its objectives, its environment and its structure. It gives a robust yet flexible framework for the future development of a sustainability performance measurement system for the mixed-use ecopark.

Part 8: Eco-Efficiency in Manufacturing Operations; International audience; From a business perspective, initiatives are undertaken at both inter-company level and intra-company level to implement the concept of sustainable development. At inter-company level, Industrial Ecology uses natural ecosystems as analogies to design sustainable industrial systems such as Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs). Similarly to a Supply Chain (SC), an EIP is a community of independent businesses that cooperate with each other to efficiently share resources (materials, resources and information). However, if the SC cooperation is focused on product manufacturing, the EIP cooperation intends to reap economic gains, improvements in environmental quality and equitable enhancement of human resources that would not have been achievable individually. In the extensive and multidisciplinary body of literature studying EIP, the lack of a framework to evaluate the performance and benefits of an EIP is repeatedly discussed. Having observed similarities between SCs and EIPs, the use of Supply Chain Management tools for the description of synergies among an EIP is motivated. A model inherited from SCOR model is proposed to map this symbiosis and is demonstrated in a case study. Even if EIPs and SCs do not share the same goals, we will conclude with the relevance of using the SCOR model for EIP management.

Interest has been raised by the recent identification of potential savings through collaborative planning in logistics operations. Even though substantial savings can be realized, two key questions exist: (i) how should potential savings be divided among a group of collaborating companies and (ii) among potential collaborating companies, how should collaborating group(s) be formed? These two questions are studied in a specific context: among potential collaborating companies; a subset, denoted the leading companies, performs collaborative planning on behalf of the others and together, they initiate formation of a collaborating group. We use the concept of a business model to detail such context. Based on the literature on network formation where potential savings are modelled by a cooperative game, four business models are explored in four different subsets of leading companies. We propose a network model as a method to determine the stable collaborating group in each computation. A case study including eight forest companies is described and analyzed. Results show that very different solution characteristics can be achieved depending on the business model selected.

Transportation accounts for a significant part of wood procurement cost, and this has generated a considerable amount of R&D efforts in many countries. In this chapter, we first introduce the vital role played by transportation in the forest value chain, and stress the information needed for decision making. Following this, we distinguish the different transportation planning decisions made at the strategic, tactical, operational and real time levels, and highlight their integration with other decisions in the forest value chain. For each level, we present a number of transportation problems and related solution methods. The strategic level often deals with designing the network and transportation mode selection, while the tactical level mainly concerns allocation rules. The operational level typically involves a vehicle routing problem, and wood reception is discussed at the real time level. Four examples of successful applications in industry are also described and the results are reported. Lastly, the chapter is concluded with open research topics.

The chapter focuses on the forest management decisions undertaken by the private industrial forestland owners concerning medium- and short-term forest planning. Firstly, the scope of forest tactical and operational planning is bounded by comparison with strategic planning as presented in this chapter and with the flow and transportation problems as they are presented in Chap. 9.

Industrial parks, commonly defined as physical spaces developed for the use of several firms simultaneously and managed by a designated manager, currently face challenge pertaining to their development and operation. Sustainable development, regarded as the conjunction of its three pillars, respectively environmental, economic and social, appears to be the answer to those challenges. This thesis is concerned with the development of a model supporting industrial park managers with their commitment to sustainable development. The presented approach is systemic and global, it seeks continuous improvement on long time horizons. The proposed model consist of a systemic modelling of the sustainable industrial park called mixed-use ecopark, a decision marking method for the establishment of an action plan and a performance expression sub-model. This model was validated with industrial parks from France and Quebec that offers a diverse panel of size, degree of maturity and commitment to sustainable development. This diversity enriched the reflection and strengthened the genericity of the developed model.; Les parcs industriels, communément définis comme des espaces physiques aménagés pour l’usage simultané de plusieurs entreprises et gérés par un gestionnaire, font aujourd'hui face à des enjeux relatifs à leur aménagement et à leur fonctionnement. La prise en compte du concept de développement durable, vu comme la conjugaison équilibrée de ses trois piliers, respectivement environnemental, économique et social, apparaît comme une réponse à ces enjeux. Ce travail concerne le développement d'un modèle accompagnant les gestionnaires de parcs industriels dans une démarche de développement durable. L’approche présentée est systémique et globale, elle vise l'amélioration continue sur de longs horizons temporels. Le modèle proposé repose sur une modélisation systémique du parc industriel durable appelé écoparc, d'une méthode d'aide à la décision pour l’établissement d'un plan d’action et d'un sous-modèle d’expression de la performance. Ce modèle a été validé auprès de parcs industriels français et québécois offrant un panel diversifié par leur taille, leur maturité et leur engagement dans la démarche de développement durable. Cette diversité a nourri la réflexion et a renforcé la généricité du modèle développé.