Shared resource management in a supply chain :study on delivery costs and delay

More and more enterprises use returnable transport and handling items (RTI) such as pallets, crates and roll containers, for cost and environmental reasons. These items flow in closed-loop within a supply chain. The management of the RTI influences the performance of all the chain. In this paper, we take an interest in the impact of delivery cost and delay of empty RTI. To solve this problem, we propose a mathematical model and different scenarios are tested to analyze the cost impact. We apply this model to a test problem based on a real life application.