Euro pallets where and when needed: Fiege relog forms online platform for the management of loading equipment
Münster, 2nd February 2018. In logistics, they are indispensable: loading equipment such as euro pallets or wire mesh containers. They are used to consolidate and transport merchandise as a single loading unit. The online platform Palettenheld.com provides a digital solution that now allows for empty euro pallets to be at the right location whenever needed. By end of January 2018, Fiege relog went live with Palettenheld.com, an Internet portal. The platform allows users to follow and schedule flows of loading equipment in real time – retailers, makers, forwarders and logistics companies can always keep an eye on their pallets.
Digital overview for improved planning certainty
“Once the transport has been completed the empty pallet is not immediately returned to the sender. That would be neither economical nor practical. The pallets are cross-charged or swapped whereby the quality of the pallets naturally comes into play”, explains Harry Matschulat, Managing Director Fiege relog in Münster. The division of the Greven-based Fiege Group specialises in reverse logistics. With Palettenheld.com, Matschulat wants to improve the planning certainty for his customers: “We document all loading equipment movements, all swaps and record the quality.”
These data are then merged and the respective documents are created for the customers. On Palettenheld.com they have a digital overview of their account. “These days, paper is still the preferred documentation medium for us as well as for our customers. Lists are manually reconciled and entered by hand into tables. Palettenheld provides us with greater flexibility and efficiency”, explains Matschulat. An App will enable the mobile use of the functionalities.
Managing inventories in real time
Matschulat sees considerable added value for his customers in the constant availability of the information: “We can provide information about the current inventory of loading equipment in real time – and issue warnings, just in case a branch is headed for a bottleneck.” The online platform offers an interface with standard applications for forwarding software like Winsped or Websped. It is also possible to embed Palettenheld.com into existing Apps or alternative applications. “We can set up entirely individualised solutions. The system grows with its users’ needs”, explains Harry Matschulat. This gives everyone involved in the value chain special access options: at the production sites, at the logistics providers, the forwarding companies, and the customer’s.
Cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly
“It is our goal to optimise the return and re-use or re-purposing of the loading equipment. This lowers costs and is simultaneously eco-friendly”, says Matschulat. Palettenheld.com gives customers of Fiege relog around the clock access to many different types of loading equipment such as euro pallets, flat pallets, half-pallets, or multi-use containers. Palettenheld supplies the required loading equipment to depots in Germany and the rest of Europe and collects them, too. “We provide a complete digital footprint of these transactions and create absolute transparency”, says Matschulat. “Everything is visible in the customer account. All the necessary information for pooling and clearing.” Palettenheld.com is legally safe to retrieve all data for accounting purposes and for quality management.
