Supply Chain Pros See Yards Overburdened by Manual Processes
February 4, 2021
Yard
management represents a massive and costly blind spot for the world’s
leading shippers and their supply chain partners, according to a new
survey released today by FourKites. “The State of Yard Management:
Industry Report 2021” sheds light on the barriers holding back the
optimization of yard operations and includes responses from 375 supply
chain professionals across the CPG, F&B, Retail and Manufacturing
industries about their unique pain points and how they manage their
yards.
The survey reveals that while more than nine in 10 respondents (92%)
believe a yard management system (YMS)1 could add value to their
organizations, only 25% currently use a YMS. This gap in perceived value
and real-world adoption of YMS can be attributed to several factors,
including organizations prioritizing investments in transportation
management systems (TMS) and warehouse management systems (WMS), and
deficiencies in many legacy YMS solutions.
As a result, companies have been forced to accept the many
inefficiencies that stem from a lack of real-time visibility and
automation in the yard, from time wasted locating equipment to
escalating labor and operational costs, to name a few.
Key survey findings
More than half of respondents cite manual processes as their biggest
challenge when it comes to both yard and appointment management (55% and
52%, respectively).
After manual processes, 21% listed locating equipment as their biggest
yard management pain point, followed by 15% citing excessive operational
costs.
After manual processes, just over 20% of respondents cited poor dock
door utilization as their biggest challenge with managing appointments,
followed by 18% citing siloes between appointment management and TMS/WMS.
27% of respondents do not maintain any kind of yard or appointment
performance metrics.
More than 1 in 5 (22%) respondents are still managing gate processes on
paper, and only 5% have taken steps to automate these processes.
Over 40% of Retailers have adopted a YMS, representing the highest group
of users among the industries surveyed.
New, state-of-the-art YMS solutions enable first-mile to last-mile
optimization
While traditional homegrown and legacy YMSs offer some minimal
visibility within the physical borders of the yard, they don’t connect
to other critical systems, nor do they offer analytic, predictive or
automated capabilities. And while technology has increasingly been
coming to the yard (e.g., IoT devices, sensors, autonomous trucking),
it’s an area that has still been highly disconnected from what’s
happening in real-time with shipments in transit.
Now,
a new generation of yard management solutions are coming to market that
combine robust integrations with TMS, WMS and real-time transportation
visibility platforms (RTTVPs) to provide a full picture of operations
and serve as the single source of truth for centralized analysis and
monitoring. They provide comprehensive reporting and metrics to ensure
every site is performing optimally, from the smallest up to multiple
enterprise locations.
With COVID-19 disruptions only exacerbating the management of congested
yards and gatehouses, many companies are now realizing the need for
better last-mile visibility into inbound loads to manage the flow of
traffic through their distribution sites. This new generation of YMS is
poised to deliver, with average implementations improving workforce
efficiency by 25-30%, increasing dock throughput by 20-40%, and reducing
detention costs by 40-80%.
“Companies need real-time visibility into every mile of a product’s
journey,” said Matt Elenjickal, Founder and CEO of FourKites. “Now, a
new generation of yard management systems, integrated with real-time
in-transit visibility platforms and other key systems, can help facility
managers optimize the yard — reducing dwell times and increasing
operating margins in the process — and track a product from point of
origin to destination.” |