On this page (10)
- Where the queue at the gate comes from
- Slot booking, arrival check-in and an SMS clearing the driver to enter
- Dock time slot calendar
- Carrier portal and driver kiosk
- Booking, gate and dock in one record
- Integrating bookings with ERP and WMS
- Implementation and pricing of the dock scheduling system
- What delivery booking will not do
- Questions about delivery booking
- Related
Where the queue at the gate comes from
A queue at the gate rarely comes from a shortage of docks. You cannot bank dock time: a dock standing empty at eleven does not carry over to seven in the morning. When arrivals are not planned, the load bunches into the same hours, because drivers set off early and want to get there before their break. The site ends up with a queue and low average dock utilisation at the same time.
Adding docks only postpones the problem. It goes away when turning up ‘whenever you can’ stops being an option and the site has a tool that enforces the rule without hiring someone to police the calendar.
Slot booking, arrival check-in and an SMS clearing the driver to enter
Booking a slot is only half the answer, because on its own it enforces nothing. Drivers also need a way to report their arrival without involving the gatehouse: otherwise every vehicle means a conversation, and at twenty vehicles a day those conversations become a bottleneck, however precisely the slots were agreed.
The third element is the one most often left out, and it is the one that clears the queue: telling the driver they can come in. Until drivers know when they will get in, they have to wait somewhere they can see the gate. A driver who gets an SMS can wait off site, and with the same number of deliveries the internal roads are no longer blocked.
Dock time slot calendar
In TraxSystem you set time slots for each dock separately, allowing for the time needed to prepare and clear the bay. How much time that is depends on the entry type: unloading a tanker is not the same as collecting pallets, so the system picks the right row in the booking calendar itself, based on what the vehicle is coming for.
Bookings can be recurring, and you can edit a whole series at once, which helps with scheduled deliveries that repeat every week at the same time. A dock can be blocked for repairs, and it then stops showing as available to carriers.
No-show bookings are handled by a separate automatic rule. A booking the vehicle never turned up for closes itself after a set number of hours, so the dock is not blocked by a slot everyone has forgotten about. Without it, a month in, the calendar looks full while the docks stand empty.
Carrier portal and driver kiosk
The carrier gets their own account on the portal and sees only their own bookings. They do not log in to your site’s system, cannot see anyone else’s deliveries and do not need to install anything. They book the slot and enter the driver and vehicle details the day before, so the details are typed in by the people who actually know them.
The driver checks in at a kiosk by the gate. The form fields are configurable, the phone number can be confirmed with an SMS code, and documents can be scanned on the spot. The kiosk runs on a touchscreen device, either in the Linux version or on an Android tablet, and works in eighteen driver languages.
The driver receives an SMS at three changes in booking status, including the most important one: clearance to enter.
Booking, gate and dock in one record
In TraxSystem a booking does not end in the calendar. When the vehicle pulls up at the gate, the camera reads the number plate, an access rule checks whether there is a valid booking for it, and at a one-way gate the barrier goes up. The booking then becomes an entry in the gate entry log, and the dispatcher and the warehouse see the same vehicle on the day’s dock plan until the end of unloading is confirmed.
The booking, entry, handling at the dock, weighing and exit make up a single visit history. In logistics, software covering that whole span, from the time slot to the vehicle leaving the site, is called a yard management system (YMS). It lets you see whether the carrier arrived within its slot, when it came in and how long unloading took.
Integrating bookings with ERP and WMS
TraxSystem bookings exchange data with other systems through programming interfaces: 35 REST interfaces and a live channel for states and alerts. There is no ready-made connector for any particular ERP or WMS, so connecting to the system you run is a separate project with its own scope and price. The hardest part of such a project is often agreeing identifiers for vehicles, business partners and deliveries across the systems. There is more on the integrations page and in the article what to require from an ERP integration.
Implementation and pricing of the dock scheduling system
Delivery booking is the ‘Bookings and warehouse’ module, added to the TraxSystem base package with a limit on the number of docks. The base package includes the entry log and gates, so a site that starts with bookings also has a record of who came in and when they left from the first day. It usually takes one to three months from signing the contract to going live, and the server stands either at your site or in our cloud.
The pricing configurator shows the price for your own number of gates and docks. Hardware, meaning the kiosk, cameras and barriers, is priced separately from the software.
What delivery booking will not do
A booking does not register an entry. It is an advance notice, and the entry is only created from it at the gate, so these are two different records with two different permissions.
Nor do bookings plan work inside the warehouse: they allocate slots and docks, but they do not queue tasks or people. The warehouse day plan is a separate screen that shows what is arriving, not who should unload it.
TraxSystem does not enforce the slot. It closes no-show bookings, but carrier punctuality is a matter for your commercial contract, and for that conversation the system gives you the data: who failed to turn up, who arrived outside their slot, and how often.
Bookings will not increase your site’s capacity. If the site physically cannot take a given number of deliveries, bookings spread them over time and show how many slots you are short, which is often the most valuable thing you learn in the first month. The system will not block entry by itself for a vehicle without a booking either: the operator sees that the vehicle has no booking, and a person makes the decision.
Questions about delivery booking
What about carriers who don’t want to use the portal?
A member of your staff enters the booking for them, as before, and the portal stays available to those who want it. Carriers usually take to it faster than most customers expect: they would rather book a slot at ten at night than phone at eight in the morning.
Can carriers see how busy our docks are?
Only the free slots they can book. They cannot see other deliveries or other carriers’ data.
Is a kiosk necessary?
No. Without a kiosk the driver reports to the gatehouse and the operator enters the arrival. The kiosk takes that work off the security staff and lets you run the health and safety induction in the driver’s language without involving anyone from your team.
What happens if a carrier is late?
The booking stays valid until the no-show threshold set for your deployment has passed. The dispatcher sees the delay on the board and can move the vehicle to another slot.
Does the dock scheduling system work in the cloud?
Yes. You can choose a server at your site or our cloud with data stored in Poland, and the licence covers the same capabilities in both. The cloud is available on subscription.
Does the carrier have to install an app?
No. The carrier portal runs in the browser; the carrier logs in to their own account and sees only their own bookings.
Related
Yard management systemPortals for external companiesVehicle entry controlDevices: kiosk and terminalsLogistics centre and warehouse
Further reading: Truck queues at the gate · How to organise dock time slots · Stopping the ‘what time should I come?’ calls · Bookings in a spreadsheet: what goes wrong