Yards are the link between warehouses and transportation. They play a critical part in logistics management and have a significant impact on the overall efficiency of a supply chain.
Unfortunately, if you are still relying on manual processes, organising your yard logistics can be an impossible mission. Inefficiencies such as materials stacked in staging lanes, dock workers standing around waiting for trailers to arrive or staff searching for seemingly lost equipment are common daily occurrences in many warehouses.
To transform this chaos into competitive advantage, you need real-time information, intelligent work direction and complete visibility of trucks, trailers, drivers, goods and materials—from the moment they arrive at the gate to the moment they leave your facility. To do this, you need a yard operations solution.
“A yard management system (YMS) can provide significant benefits to your operation by managing shipments from the yard gate to the dock. A YMS provides real-time visibility into trailer locations and contents to drive efficiencies, improve decision-making, and reduce detention fees.”
Inbound Logistics - 2019 YMS Guide
YMS is a software system designed to manage the movement of trucks and trailers in the yard of a manufacturing facility, warehouse, or distribution centre. It provides real-time information on the location of trailers in the yard and allows yard employees to move trailers from staging to docks to fill orders in an efficient manner.
Complete Visibility and Tracking
The yard operation is critical to moving freight in a timely manner, and visibility is essential to avoid bottlenecks and get trucks in and out. Everything is visible in a yard with a fully integrated yard management system. It’s easy to find loads and track SKUs.
Visibility also saves time and money on security, check-ins and check-outs, and all other aspects of loss prevention.
Increase Productivity
“A YMS provides real-time visibility into asset locations and their operational status including dwell times in various states. By monitoring all the delays in the visit lifecycle, it becomes possible to accelerate operations, such as rapidly identifying available empty trailers for outbound loads.”
Many companies have grown to realise that transportation delays often take place within the DC’s yard, not in transit. Delays can result in production downtime for manufacturing operations, spoilage if handling perishable goods, lost sales caused by stock-out for retailers or credibility issues with carriers and customers.
The YMS will also make the yard safer, by reducing the need for individuals walking around with clipboards performing manual checks.
“Companies that have deployed advanced YMS applications typically gain efficiency with yard jockey labour in the range of 25 percent to 35 percent because the software eliminates manual searching processes in addition to maximizing yard driver efficiency. Yard operations with advanced YMS typically enjoy an increase of two to three more trailer moves per hour.
Yard operations with advanced YMS also spend far fewer hours performing yard checks which provide a means of verifying data integrity in the yard operation. These efficiency gains typically translate into reduced labour requirements and less yard jockey truck requirements.
Companies that deploy advanced YMS solutions report increases in warehouse throughput efficiency on the order of 10 percent to 12 percent for outbound operations during peak season. This benefit is directly tied to YMS because the application works to avoid delays incurred due to trailers not being brought to the shipping doors on time.”
Better Planning and Management
Better visibility irrevocably results in better forecasting and planning. It allows you to set appointments for drivers in advance, schedule labour accordingly, anticipate yard moves and only bring inventory into your building when you’re ready to handle it.
Conclusion
A YMS connects the WMS to the TMS. It complements and augments the planning functions within these systems by providing execution visibility.
A YMS can give managers complete visibility of their yard operations resulting in real cost savings through better planning and management. Better workflows can reduce labour, fuel, and retention costs. Higher accuracy means fewer errors, delays and spoilage.
With the HighJump platform, iWMS Australasia can offer your business tailored, configurable and scalable YMS, WMS and TMS solutions that will meet your exact business needs today and for years to come.
Contact us to discuss your business requirements.
Click here to download the full HighJump Yard Operation Solutions brochure.