What is a dock time slot

A time slot (also called a delivery slot or dock appointment) is a period reserved for one delivery at a specific loading dock or service point. For that period the dock is taken and nobody else can book it. A delivery booking occupies a slot, and the day’s schedule is the set of slots across all the docks.

A slot is exclusive: two deliveries “around ten” at the same dock are one conflict.

What a time slot is made up of

A slot covers more than the unloading itself. A full booking has three parts:

1. preparation time: the vehicle reversing onto the dock, positioning, paperwork,
2. operation time, meaning the actual loading or unloading,
3. time after the operation: pulling away, clearing the space and getting ready for the next vehicle.

Leaving out the first and third parts is the most common mistake when time slots are first introduced. A schedule that counts only the operation time falls apart in the second hour of work, because there isn’t a minute left between deliveries for anything else.

How long a time slot should be

Slot length depends on the type of transport and can’t be set as a single value. With pallets off a curtainsider, it is the number of pallets and whether a forklift is free; with a bulk delivery, the unloading method; with a tanker, connecting up and the safety procedures; and with a collection of finished goods, picking and the dispatch paperwork.

So slot length is tied to the type of transport, because the same dock handles different vehicles and each needs a different amount of time. The starting point is timing a dozen or so real deliveries of each type, because the assumption “it takes half an hour” can be wrong in both directions.

Late for a slot: tolerance and what happens next

Rules for late arrivals are set before the first one happens. The tolerance is the number of minutes after the slot during which a late vehicle is still handled under its booking. Without it the schedule is unrealistic; set too wide, it makes the slot meaningless.

Once the tolerance is exceeded, the site can choose between handling the vehicle in the first free slot, moving it to the end of the day or turning it away. Turning a vehicle away can be justified at chilled docks, but rarely anywhere else.

You also need to set up automatic release of bookings nobody turned up for, because otherwise the schedule fills up with bookings that will never be used.

Do time slots increase dock capacity

No. Time slots spread deliveries over time, but they don’t increase the number of deliveries the site can handle. The success of the implementation hinges on this distinction: if the site physically can’t fit that many deliveries, the schedule will show the shortfall but won’t eliminate it. Showing it can be valuable in itself, because it turns “we always have queues” into a specific number of missing slots.

Time slots in TraxSystem

In TraxSystem a slot is a booking on a dock, and the preparation time before and after the delivery comes from the entry type, so a tanker and a curtainsider at the same dock get different buffers. Slots are planned by logistics, and a carrier that has been given access sees free times in the portal and books by itself. The dock calendar shows the day graphically, and a dock can be closed to bookings while it is under repair.

TraxSystem won’t make carriers punctual; it shows who failed to turn up and who arrived outside their slot. Nor is it a warehouse management system (WMS): it plans the time and place of handling and doesn’t deal with what is in the trailer.

The price of time slots is set by the number of docks, because together with the dock calendar they belong to the Bookings and warehouse module, whose dock limit grows with the base package. The pricing configurator will work out what that comes to for your number of docks.

Questions and answers

See also: How to organise time slots at your loading docks · What is delivery booking? · Time slot calendar vs yard management system: what is the difference