Management of Pallets-Rented and Exchange

Summary

Require suggestions on how to manage these pallets: Rented(CHEP/LPR) and Exchange (EPAL)

Content

We are a manufacturing global company. We buy exchange pallets(EPAL) to ship our products to our customers, in many cases we expect the customer to return the empty pallets so we can reuse them. The business requirement in this case is to track in inventory the receipt of these items, plan their purchases based on inventory levels and finally track the shipments to our customers as well as the returns of empty pallets.

For rented pallets the items are non-costed as the payment to the supplier is based on days and number of pallets in inventory by period. Customers and manufacturers have agreements with the pallet owner(PECO; CHEP; LPR; CEP) to use the pallets and pay a rental fee monthly. Pallets should be received in inventory and shipped to customers, here the information of receipts and shipments has to be shared with the supplier to automatically adjust inventory levels in their systems to charge us for the rental.