Greening activities in warehouses: a model for identifying sustainable strategies in material handling

Recently many firms adopted a “green warehousing” approach in order to improve their environmental performances. The common driver of the solutions identified is in the reduction of the energy consumptions, considered as the key “greening element”. The optimization of energy required by order picking (estimated to count up to 55% of the total energy for warehousing activities) can be obtained by means of the adoption of forklift equipped by different engines or by means of the optimization of operational activities such as the pickers routing, the movements for material handling, etc. In literature, the type of forklift and the storage configuration to be adopted are addressed as different issues. In this study a support decision tool based on an iterative nonlinear integer model is developed. The tool allows identifying the strategy (the type of forklift and the storage configuration to be adopted) optimizing the environmental performances of warehouse activities.