Simulation-Based Analysis of a Cross-Actor Pallet Exchange Platform

Pallets are returnable transport items and of great importance for supply chains. They ensure efficient storage, transport, and handling processes. The pallet cycle, however, is associated with a substantial effort. In addition to administrative costs, extra trips and detours must often be taken by forwarders to retrieve pallets or buy new pallets. In this paper, a fictitious cross-actor pallet exchange platform is analyzed, which manages pallet debts and receivables between the different actors of a supply chain. A claim transfer is performed, and the actors no longer owe pallets to each other, but to the system. This provides greater flexibility, as actors with open claims can collect pallets from all actors that have a negative balance according to the system. Our analysis shows that with such a system, additional trips can be reduced by 70%, thus making the management of pallets more efficient.