With so much time and energy spent ensuring that precious cargo gets from point A to point B, it can be easy to overlook the impact facilities and yards have on shipment velocity. But these critical nodes can actually be the root cause of unexpected costs, excess transit time and unhappy customers.
Various factors can lead to detention and delays at these facilities, impacting a container’s ability to make it to the port. Yard congestion is a common culprit, where overcrowded spaces make locating and retrieving containers difficult. Inefficient operations, such as slow unloading or a lack of equipment, can also cause problems to snowball. And the absence of real-time insights makes these problems all the more likely.
Truck queues can quickly become problematic, creating traffic problems and resulting in fines. These delays not only disrupt the flow of goods but also cause drivers to waste valuable time.
And while missed delivery windows are common, mishandling them shouldn’t be. Such inefficiencies can result in millions of dollars lost annually. For example, if a driver no-shows, it can cost the carrier or shipper $1,500 to re-store perishable goods. Once a load is staged at the dock door, that door becomes unusable until the load is moved, striking a blow to the facility’s capacity.
As carriers increasingly look to improve truck utilization, the tendency to drop trailers at a facility has become common. While this efficiency helps a carrier’s bottom line, it can lead to a series of costly problems for a facility — especially when trailers are left in the yard without being properly logged and monitored.
Without knowledge of where, exactly, a container is in the yard, staff are forced to waste time hunting down missing inventory or making unnecessary adjustments. These inefficiencies can drag down the entire operation and, as the problems compound, erode profitability and competitiveness.
No matter how reliable the carrier is, there will inevitably be delays in transporting goods that are out of the control of the driver. This wreaks havoc on the entire yard, but the dock team is especially affected, leading to wasted employee time and rising overtime costs. Typically, a dock team’s day is planned out according to the arrival and departure of freight. But when the incoming and outgoing schedule changes unexpectedly, that schedule goes out the window, making it even more difficult to prioritize tasks.
When faced with the challenges of relieving bottlenecks that impede the movement of goods, it’s understandable that supply chain professionals might be tempted to solve the problem by simply adding more resources to the equation. After all, if the issue is a lack of capacity or manpower, then hiring temporary staff and leasing additional lots for overflow might seem like a logical solution.
However, this approach can often create more problems than it solves. For one, bringing in temporary workers can be a costly endeavor, especially if they require training and onboarding to get up to speed with the facility’s processes and systems. This not only drives up labor costs but can also lead to inconsistencies in performance and quality, as temporary staff may not be as familiar with the operation as permanent employees.
And leasing additional lots for overflow can be a logistical nightmare in its own right. While it may provide a short-term solution for capacity issues, it can also create new challenges around inventory tracking, shuttle operations and yard management. Imagine a scenario where a critical shipment is accidentally sent to the overflow lot, only to be lost among the sea of trailers and containers. The result is a frustrated customer and a scrambling yard team trying to locate the missing freight.
But perhaps the biggest problem with this approach is that it fails to address the underlying issues that are causing the capacity and efficiency challenges in the first place. Rather than investing in temporary band-aids, supply chain professionals would be better served by taking a step back and examining the root causes of their yard and facility struggles.
Globalized logistics networks rely on hub-and-spoke distribution, cross-docking and transloading to optimize supply chain efficiency. However, when detention and delays occur at these facilities, disruptions to the flow of goods can go undetected by traditional transportation management systems (TMS), causing unexpected expenses to balloon.
Investing in technology that helps streamline operations can loosen the bottleneck at facilities. For instance, creating a digital gate environment that prepopulates incoming load information into a check-in can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to check drivers in. Using an agile appointment management system can help teams see when a carrier is running early or late, ensuring that there’s room to accommodate them or send them to another location to wait. These help reduce the volume of inbound trucks and their time on-site.
A significant portion of the hundreds of thousands of trailers parked in yards across the globe are partially or completely empty. Companies find themselves in a paradoxical situation where they are unknowingly sitting on billions of dollars worth of inventory while also possessing billions of dollars worth of unused temporary storage space. Considering that an average trailer can accommodate up to 52 standard-size pallets, this inefficiency is staggering.
Having technology, like a yard management system (YMS), helps companies access the status and contents of each trailer. YMS information can include loaded status and details on the trailer’s contents, helping to create a running register of warehouse goods temporarily stored in empty containers on-site and alleviating warehouse capacity issues.
Warehouses usually operate in silos, managing their own budgets and making various decisions at a facility level. But with the right insights and an end-to-end view of the supply chain, it becomes easier to know how to reduce those long truck queues, account for dropped trailers and ensure your employees aren’t stuck in a loop of wasting time and putting out fires.
Take, for instance, the ability to drive meaningful continuous improvement across your operations — to go beyond mere orchestration and organization and take true control of your yard operations. With the ability to compare performance metrics from one site to another, you can drill into specific best practices and implement them across your network for compounded savings. Does a specific yard manager organize their dock doors in a certain way, making their turn times significantly shorter than other sites? You can now see quantified metrics on specific behaviors and replicate them where possible.
While the knee-jerk reaction might be to throw more bodies at the problem or expand physical capacity, these temporary fixes often fail to address the underlying issues. Instead, by investing in the right technology and processes, facilities can unlock greater visibility, efficiency and control over their operations. This proactive approach enables them to better manage detention risk, streamline workflows and keep goods flowing smoothly from the port to the final destination. Consider the following key investments:
In the face of global supply chain disruptions, it’s easy to fixate on transportation challenges and overlook the critical role that tech-enabled facilities play in maintaining the flow of goods. However, neglecting the efficiency and resilience of your facilities can have severe consequences.
Though the upfront cost and effort might seem daunting, the reality is that integrating your TMS, WMS and YMS and investing in things like computer vision, automatic scheduling and self-service systems, will pay dividends compared to short-term band-aids like additional labor or overflow space.
By proactively addressing potential bottlenecks and blind spots, you can minimize the impact of the unexpected and maintain the flow of goods, even in the face of adversity.
