Inspection activities: used pallets could not be directly moved to the emptypallet storagearea, as an inspection activityhas tobe carried out to verify their overall functionality. First of all, a quality control check is required in order to avoid the risk of product breakage during shipment. Defective pallets are sent to maintenance companies or to the disposal (or recycling) center according to inspection results. Furthermore, inspection activities are also critical for guaranteeing the safety of workers as outlined by a recent alert launched by the Western Australia Government's department of Commerce (DoC, 2013). If a standardized pallet system is working, these activities are developed according to predefined procedures and common standard quality requirements are verified. As an example, defect detection systems usually applied could vary from optical, acoustic/ultrasonic, microwave as well as X-ray, or dielectric scanning systems (Kabir et al., 2003; Patricio and Maravall, 2007);