Leveraging digital twins for enhanced sustainable warehouse management

Warehouses are increasingly under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint. Yet, traditional carbon accounting approaches remain ill-suited to support real-time or operational decision-making dedicated to lower their environmental impacts. These methods typically rely on aggregated, static data and offer vague emission estimates. To address this issue, this paper introduces a bottom-up carbon accounting framework embedded within a warehouse Digital Twin (DT), enabling real-time, resource-level emissions tracking and scenario analysis. The framework builds upon the Toyota Business Practices (TBP) method to analyze the results of traditional carbon accounting by integrating data streams from Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and sensor inputs into DT simulation modules to allocate emissions at the level of equipment and processes. A case study conducted in a 3PL warehouse in France demonstrates the model’s ability to match aggregate estimates from conventional carbon accounting (CCA) tools, while delivering substantially higher resolution. Notably, the DT identified overlooked emission hotspots, including employee commuting and the use of packaging materials made from wood and plastic, to support operational “what-if” analysis and evaluate the carbon and cost trade-offs of alternative scenarios. These findings highlight the potential of Warehouse DTs to shift carbon accounting from a static reporting function to an actionable sustainability management tool.