For instance, the benefit of pallet pooling has been well studied. There are a lot of literatures on pallet management. Finally some conclusions and suggestions are proposed. Meanwhile, the supply chain cost models of the three PMS are developed and the costs of the three PMS in different situations are compared by Anylogic software.
Firstly, literatures on pallet management are reviewed.
This paper focuses mainly on how to help pallet managers choose a proper kind of PMS from the perspective of supply chain cost based on data collected from filed survey. The most common and widely accepted PMS includes extensive management of pallets (EMP), transfer of pallet’s ownership (TPO), and pallet rent (PR). In order to manage pallets efficiently, researchers have developed several pallet management strategies (PMS).
However, there are six dimensions for plat pallet sanctioned by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization), which makes the pallet management become really challenging. Despite the diversity in the structure of pallets, flat pallet has gained the majority in use. The most common material used in pallets is wood. Pallets can be made of wood, plastics, steel, and so on. Pallets are as well regarded instrumental in protecting cargoes and improving logistics efficiency. The use of pallets has brought normalization and standardization to logistics. Pallets are so widely used that we can find them in nearly every logistical operation scenario, such as packaging, transportation, warehousing, loading and unloading, etc. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.Īs an innovation in logistics industry, pallet is known for “Pallets move the world” and “Pallets are the unsung hero of the world of logistics”. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.Ĭompeting interests: One or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: Inner Mongolia Branch of Agricultural Bank of China (Chunhua Chen). Inner Mongolia Branch of Agricultural Bank of China provided support in the form of salaries for Chunhua Chen, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71862026, ), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018T110209, ), Inner Mongolia Natural Science Foundation of China (2018MS07006, ), and State Scholarship Found of China Scholarship Council (201808155025, ). Received: FebruAccepted: Published: June 6, 2019Ĭopyright: © 2019 Ren et al. PLoS ONE 14(6):Įditor: Baogui Xin, Shandong University of Science and Technology, CHINA The selection strategies of PMS are proposed based on the results.Ĭitation: Ren J, Zhao Q, Liu B, Chen C (2019) Selection of pallet management strategies from the perspective of supply chain cost with Anylogic software. Finally, the effect of several important parameters on the cost is studied by sensitivity analysis. The results show that the cost of PR is constantly lower than EMP, and also lower than TPO when the operation period is no more than 37 months. Secondly, all parameters involved in the models are valued based on data that is collected from industry survey. Firstly, cost models of three kinds of PMS are presented. This paper addresses mainly on how to help pallet managers choose a certain kind of PMS from the perspective of supply chain cost. Pallets are so widely used that we can find them in nearly every logistical operation scenario.
Pallet is a very important innovation in logistics industry.