A simulation comparison analysis of effective pallet management scenarios

Pallet management usually involves direct and reverse logistics flows; it represents a critical activity for several logistics providers all over the world. Pallets are needed in order to ship products through the whole supply chain. In the European area, a standardized quality-assured system - defined as the “EPAL-System” - works as direct or postponed interchange could be applied. Service level could be improved by both increasing pallet availability in the direct logistics and reducing total cost of the reverse logistics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an effective comparison of different pallet management scenarios based on EPAL-System. The two organizational interchange procedures allowed by the EPAL-System have been tested. A simulation model has allowed to compare four scenarios in terms of supplier's service time, internal operations, and overall operating costs. Results confirm that a better coordination of actors in the reverse chain enables to increase performances of the whole system.