Inventory sharing strategy and optimization for reusable transport items

Reusable transport items (RTI), as a sustainable solution to the increasing packaging wastes generated along with the ever-growing globalized supply chains, create both challenges and opportunities to organizations for their management. A trend of organizations outsourcing their RTI activities explains the rapid emerging of a third-party RTI pooler. Yet few research studies have been conducted from the perspective of the RTI pooler for optimizing their customer allocation, and few on the decision support model for a practical case in the developing economies. This research intends to fill in this gap. Motivated by a case study of a leading RTI pooling company in China, this research proposes to implement a sharing strategy into the daily planning operation of distribution and routing. A decision support framework is developed to optimize the distribution flows and dispatching vehicle routes by the use of a two-stage solution process. Empirical results demonstrate an economic savings of 28.1% in the transportation costs along with environmental and social advantages implicated by the shortened travel distance of vehicles. •Global inventory sharing strategy for Reusable Report Items.•A decision support tool to allocate customers and plan truck routes.•Empirical results of 28.1% savings in transportation costs.