Integration of LCA and C-Lean for sustainability assessment of short supply chain related to forest products

The challenge for developing a “green production oriented economy”, is the definition of sustainable production and consumption models which are able to enlarge the current approach oriented to the greening of single production towards the creation of a comprehensive sustainable system, involving and integrating different supply chains in the same geographical district. The present work illustrate an attempt to create a short supply chain in Lombardy region, integrating forest management, furniture production, recycling of production residues and energy production with the aim to optimize materials and energy flows and to reduce the overall impact on environmental compartments taking into account strategic and economic perspectives and evaluating limits and opportunities of a local system compared to traditional market models. Sustainability evaluation of this kind of systems needs a comprehensive set of tool for the analysis because it is supposed to address a wide range of questions about environmental sustainability (e.g. availability of natural resources and carrying capacity of the ecosystems that should provide them), economic sustainability (e.g. the economic feasibility of the supply chain and its possible competitiveness) an social sustainability (e.g. the ability to create new job opportunities and to foster local development). Thus, in the present work the overall process optimisation is based on the integration of two methodologies coming from different disciplines: a strategic production planning tool (Lean thinking), originally developed for the economic optimization of production processes and then enlarged to the optimization of eco-efficiency performances (C-lean) and the Life Cycle Thinking (LCT)