# Pallet Picking Strategy in Food Collecting Center
## 1 Introduction
Transportation costs can amount up to the 50% of total logistic costs and can affect the configuration of the logistic systems [16]. Additionally, the traditional manufacturing has been criticized for lots size, means of transport (defined as _Outbound Logistic_ by Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP)), and management of the warehouse (referred as to _Inbound or Intra Logistic_ by CSCMP), for which the need for sustainable manufacturing has been raised. In the specific, the environmental sustainability of logistic activities has become a prominent element of business strategy and competitive advantage. Hence, there are strong social and political pressures because of the increasing of public awareness for global warming and climate change finalized to reduce polluting emissions [15]. Along with these policies addressed to minimize the industrial environmental impacts, many companies have realized that the sustainable use of resources may also be associated with financial savings. In this regard, the Carbon Footprint (CF) and Management Costs (MCs) are relevant for measuring the goodness of the picked resources [6; 16]. In the case of the Italian agro-food sector, organizations are mainly small-medium enterprises mostly operating in Short Food Supply Chain, characterized by variable lead time when stocking and picking goods in warehouse for marketing processes. In most cases, the goods are handled and stocked, without a specific criterion, and lacking of proper planning for managing the delivering time: in this sector, the warehouse layout is crucial, and it affects noticeably the delivering time. These deficiencies are addressed to those intermediaries that are required to set up a logistic layout to minimize the economic and environmental impacts of the handling activities. Thus, intermediaries play an increasingly important role to keep small-medium farms alive [16]. Starting from the lack of proper material handling planning in agro-food collect center, it emerges the necessity to provide a classification of a set of parameters and indicators allow to evaluate the logistic performance of agro-food collecting center under environmental/economic perspective and conduct further empirical investigation in the field of Short Food Supply Chain. This gap allows us to formulate the primary research question: Considering the new logistic strategies (e.g., warehouse layout, material handling equipment, warehouse storage strategy, etc.) in food collecting centers,and how they impact on the business of seasonal foodstuffs in the short food supply chain, is there a \"best strategy\" that allows to optimize the logistic performance of agro-food collecting centers under economic and environmental perspective? To fully investigate the primary research problem, the following subsidiary research questions are raised:  
* What decisional parameters, in terms of logistics management, of agro-food collecting centers allow to evaluate the impacts on environmental and economic performance of short food supply chain? * What specific capabilities will be expected to have the agro-food collecting centers in order to reduce costs and travelled distances, and, consequently, Carbon Footprint emissions and management/operative costs? * How does the pallet picking strategy affect the business competitiveness of seasonal foodstuffs of the fruits and vegetables chain? In other words, this study aims to assess the most efficient layout in agro-food class-based storage warehouses in order to identify the best pallet picking strategy allowing for the minimization of the environmental impact and the management cost due to inbound material handling. For this purpose, there have been considered three different warehouse management configurations: longitudinal, transversal, and fishbone. Each one is assessed considering the handling time from collecting the good from the rack, to the carry and to the picking area, according an ABC class-based storage approach.