Simulation of sustainability aspects within the industrial environment and their implication on the simulation technique

Simulation is a broadly excepted analytic instrument and planning tool. Today, industrial simulation is mainly applied for engineering and physical purposes and covers a short time horizon compared to intergenerational justice. In parallel, sustainability is gaining more importance for the industrial planning because themes like global warming, child labour, and compliance with social and environmental standards have to be taken into account. Sustainability is characterized by comprehensively examining the three dimensions economy, ecology and social questions as well as their long-term perspective. Adequate indicators and an adaptation of simulation methods and procedures are necessary to evaluate the sustainability of industrial processes. A further challenge is the consideration of sust ainability effects coming from the usual manufacturing process structure of a value creation network, in particular from cross-company cooperation and geographically distributed production. This article analyses the implications of those advanced tasks on the simulation technique and their application and proposes a conceptual framework for the simulation of such networks, which differentiates the effects of sustainability by the level of decision making within enterprises.