Material Handling Equipment - Industrial and Systems Engineering

3. LOAD FORMATION EQUIPMENTFigure 4. Basic pallet patterns. 10Special-purpose pallets:The following terms are used to distinguish pallets used for specific purposes: 11• Take-it-or-leave-it pallet—pallet fitted with fixed cleats on the top deckboards to permitforks to pass beneath the unit load and remove it from the pallet.• Slave pallet—pallet or platform used as a support base for palletized loads in a rack orconveyor system.• Captive pallet—pallet intended for use within a facility and not exchanged.• Exchange pallet—pallet exchanged among a group of shippers and where ownership of thepallet is transferred with the ownership of the load.• Shipping pallet—pallet used for a single one-way trip from shipping to receiving, afterwhich it is disposed.The Pallet Loading ProblemThe pallet loading (or packing) problem refers to determining the “optimal” patterns (or layouts)of the items to be loaded onto pallets.There are, at least, two different problems that can be identified as “the Pallet Loading Problem”:• The Manufacturer’s Pallet Loading Problem—loading identical items onto a pallet so thatthe number of items per pallet is maximized.• The Distributor’s Pallet Loading Problem(s)—(single pallet) loading various size itemsonto a pallet so that the volume of items loaded onto the pallet is maximized; (multiplepallets) loading various size items onto identical pallets so that the number of palletsrequired to load all of the items is minimized.19