A Conceptual Framework for the Integration of Transportation Management Systems and Carbon Calculators

Greenhouse gas emissions produced by supply chain processes such as manufacturing, warehousing, or transportation have a huge impact on climate change. Hence, they are the focus of possible future regulations introduced by (inter)national institutions. In particular, transportation processes play a decisive role in supply chains and are responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, many companies try to quantify the amount of emissions caused by their transportation activities. At the moment, several tools for the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions, so called carbon calculators, are available but their results vary to a large extent depending on the input data, the parameters included, and the methodology used. Especially real time data like traffic conditions or driving habits are not taken into account although they affect the result significantly. For that purpose we present a conceptual framework for the integration of real time data and carbon calculators by linking greenhouse gas emission data with Transportation Management Systems. By doing so, the accuracy of emission estimates from a carbon calculator can be improved.