Did you know? (March 01, 2008)

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Inefficient management of inbound and outbound trailers can prove costly. Poor management and scheduling create bottlenecks in the dock and yard that may require more man-power and reduce sales when inbound goods sit in the yard instead of filling customer orders.

Visibility is central to effective yard management, yet when Aberdeen Group surveyed companies regarding their methods for managing inbound and outbound trailers in the yard it found a distinct lack of sophistication. Only 12% were employing an integrated approach, using a Yard Management System (YMS) that was a module of their Warehouse Management System (WMS). Another 24% were using a commercial Yard Management System that wasn’t integrated with the WMS. Most concerning, however, was the finding that 58% were still using clipboards and spreadsheets.

The Aberdeen survey also asked the participating companies to indicate their driver turn around time (gate in/gate out). It found that Best in Class companies turn around drivers in one hour or less. The integrated approach had the best performance range of all groups. No company with a fully integrated YMS had a turn around time longer than three hours; many specified 30 minutes. The siloed approach was less effective withresults in all three performance categories, but no company reported a time longer than 4 hours. The manual approach produced widely ranging results. Some companies reported times of less than 30 minutes; members of this group also posted the worstresults in the field with turn around over 6 hours.

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