Pallet Scheduling Models Under Deterministic and Non-Deterministic Scenarios Using a Hybrid GA Method: Pallet Scheduling Models

Introduction

Pallet, as one of the crucial ingredients in modern logistics system, has played significant role on efficiency improvement of transportation and distribution processes (Zhou et al. 2016, Ren and Zhang 2010a). The pallet is a portable, horizontal, rigid platform for goods storing, stacking, handling, and transporting in a unit load (Aldaz-Carroll and Raballand 2005, White and Hamner 2005). During the logistics plants, the prevailing adoption of cargo loading with pallet has reduced the intermediate handling operations, leading to the efficiency improvement and resources deployment (He et al. 2019a). Besides, the pallet contributes to the achievement of supply chain integration and logistics synergy. The pallet has been regarded as one of the key innovations of the twentieth century for material handling. The adoption of pallet innovation has improved the efficiency of logistics activities; however, the utilization rate of pallet is relative low in Chinese industrial plant due to the lack of pallet sharing mechanism innovation and pallet scheduling optimization (He et al. 2018). The pallet sharing alliance starts from the Europe, which assists to achieve the logistics cost reduction and resources sharing. Raballand and Aldaz‐Carroll (2007) examined the influence of multiplicity of pallet standards on the logistics cost through case study, and results show that the pallet sharing alliance can improve cost reduction and operational efficiency.