This study aims to assess delivery lockers as a last-mile solution, considering the behavior and interaction among e-commerce stakeholders. In Brazil, a large portion of deliveries are attended home. This results in a large number of failed deliveries and redelivery attempts, which can reach up to three delivery attempts. Delivery lockers (DL) represent a solution to reduce the number of re-deliveries and consolidate the delivery of goods. The implementation of DL and the exclusion of the third delivery attempt are evaluated in this study via an agent-based simulation model (ABSM) in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Four scenarios were simulated by varying delivery locker implementation and the exclusion of the third attempts, which allowed comparable results to be obtained for each agent, in terms of gains and operational and external costs (emission, noise, and congestion). The scenario that most closely resembles the current situation was the one that presented the worst results. The implementation of the lockers brings improvements to this scenario in terms of reducing re-deliveries and distances traveled by trucks. When the possibility of three delivery attempts is excluded, the benefits are even greater. The deployment of lockers also enables carriers to reduce the number of trucks required to make deliveries, thereby increasing their profits.

To model the urban logistic environment, many variables need to be taken into account as this system is composed of different stakeholders with conflicting objectives and actions that influence the actions of others. Agent-based modeling (ABM) and simulations are useful tools for studying this environment with so many variables and uncertainties. Typically, urban logistic stakeholders are represented by agents who interact with each other and obey different rules. This study presents a conceptual framework for evaluating e-commerce urban freight using ABM and Design of Experiments (DoE). The simulations performed were designed to highlight the most important parameters that affect the response variable and should be taken into account in the experimentation process. The scenarios were studied to evaluate the use of Delivery Lockers (DLs) and failures in delivery attempts. The results of the DoE analysis allowed us to verify that the DL utilization rate, first attempt delivery failure rate, and truck stoppage time most impact costs and profits in the modeled system. The framework presented showed that the use of DoE in the simulation study reduced the number of simulated scenarios, which is a significant gain given the complexity of the model and the relatively large computational time required to execute a new scenario. Consequently, different studies may use the findings presented here to plan scenarios in their simulation projects.

The Brazilian steel sector, inserted in a scenario of crisis and competitiveness, is going through a moment when optimization procedures in the production process are well regarded. However, issues related to sustainability, such as controls on energy consumption and carbon dioxide (\(\hbox {CO}_{2}\)) emissions, are also fundamental to be considered as analysis variables since the demand for actions that preserve the ecosystem and aim at the conscientious consumption of resources has increased. An important technical tool that can help to address these factors together is Discrete Event Simulation (DES), a well-known computational simulation method to support decision-making. Still hardly used to explore issues related to sustainability, a DES model allows the representation of an existing system in a virtual space, providing an ideal environment for conducting experiments, without the need to make changes in practice. Thus, this paper applied the DES method in a steelmaker located in Brazil, in order to simulate the impact, after a possible change in the system, on the behavior of three analysis variables: production volume, electrical energy consumption, and \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emission. The use of a discrete event simulation methodology and JaamSim®open-source software, provided a low-cost solution and allowed the simulation of results in the virtual scenario, after modification. As a result, in the alternative scenario, daily production increased by almost 87% and the total electrical energy consumption decreased by 38.2%, a total saving of 100,440.6 kilowatts per hour, which is equivalent to 71.2 metric tons of avoided \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emission.