Crucial Components to Successful Yard Management

Efficient dock and yard management is paramount. Your yard plays a critical role in larger supply chains, facilitating the transportation of goods and resources. Your customers rely on fast and cost-effective shipments. Unfortunately, many challenges exist for companies like yours.

Countless assets move through your yard, and drivers constantly come in and out to meet shipping deadlines. Your dock and yard must operate like a well-oiled machine. Otherwise, backlogs and congestion can cause costly delays, rising costs and unhappy carriers and customers.

Improving operations can seem like an uphill battle, but it's easier than you think. Keep reading to learn more about the key components of successful yard management and how a platform like Conduit can lead to great improvements across the board.

What is Yard Management?

First things first: What exactly is yard management?

At its core, yard management is a practice that revolves around the careful planning and execution of yard operations in a warehouse or distribution center. Your yard bridges the gap between transportation and warehousing. It likely has a never-ending line of inbound and outbound trucks. Drivers are there to pick up shipments, and it's up to dock and yard workers and managers to effectively load or unload them, handle documentation and send drivers on their way.

It sounds simple enough, but you know better than anyone else that yards can be chaotic. This initial stage of transportation has many moving parts. It's up to you to keep things moving efficiently to maintain and support the supply chain. Yard management involves dock scheduling, managing driver check in and out, managing drop trailers and containers, coordinating workers, managing documents, keeping track of inventory and more.

Key Elements

Effective management can turn your yard into a well-oiled machine. However, getting to that point isn't easy. There are several key elements to successful yard management. Focusing on these areas can lead to substantial improvements.

1. Facility Efficiency

Contrary to popular belief, picking up a shipment isn't as simple as having a driver show up at the yard and leave with a full load. The docking process requires strategic direction and a team of trained dock workers. Depending on the goods moved, preparing a delivery may involve using forklifts and other heavy-duty equipment. Plus, there's careful documentation you must complete.

The biggest challenge with yard management is maintaining efficient workflows. More often than not, drivers spend hours waiting for facilities to do their part, resulting in huge delays, yard bottlenecks and other issues. 

Effective yard management requires facility efficiency. Every task, including scheduling and forklift dispatching, must be rock-solid.

2. Visibility of Inventory

Another key component of yard management is inventory visibility. Your yard gets a constant influx of new assets while simultaneously sending other assets out. Failing to keep track of available inventory and its location can lead to a nightmare scenario. Not only does a lack of inventory transparency significantly reduce facility efficiency, but you could run into problems fulfilling orders and getting goods to customers.

Data plays a big role in inventory management. In the past, yard managers relied on paper documentation. Fortunately, there are better ways to do things today. However, failing to prioritize inventory visibility will only harm your business.

3. Transportation Management

Yard management benefits from seamless transportation management integration. While your yard is the link between transportation and warehousing, successful management needs the ability to collect and exchange information after deliveries leave your property.

Great transportation management facilitates the flow of information between inbound logistics and outbound deliveries, keeping all stakeholders in the loop to maximize supply chain efficiency.

Why You Should Use a YMS

A yard management system (YMS) is a tool that helps you cover those key elements and more. It brings logistics and supply chain management into the digital age, enhancing dock and yard management in many ways. Platforms like Conduit are game-changers for every industry, providing an overview of yard processes while offering access to capabilities that support every facet of day-to-day operations.

Let's review several reasons why you should consider investing in top-quality YMS software like Conduit.

Real-Time Predictive ETA

Delays happen. It's the reality of the transportation industry. However, even minor delays can cause serious backlogs for your dock and yard. A YMS can help provide more transparency into driver arrival times, providing real-time visibility with a predictive estimated time of arrival (ETA).

Yard managers can use YMS software to see if a driver is late, early or on time for their scheduled pickup or delivery. This insight can help you be more proactive about preparing equipment and teams, ensuring things move swiftly whenever they arrive. ETAs can also help you shift schedules to avoid bottlenecks or improve labor utilization.

Asset Tracking

Monitoring the movement of assets, trucks and trailers can help with critical decision-making. GPS and RFID technology make it easy to keep track of assets on the move. Those capabilities can lead to better route optimization, reducing costs and saving time. They can also help ease stakeholder worries, allow managers to make informed decisions and more.

Efficient Dock and Gate Scheduling

Efficient scheduling is one of the biggest challenges that warehouse managers face. Without proper scheduling, drivers and yard staff must deal with never-ending delays and bottlenecks. Delays are costly, and no one wants to deal with them. Drivers may wait on your dock for hours, accuring high detention costs and potentially risking penalties for late deliveries. Meanwhile, your staff will have to work like mad to get everything back on track.

You can avoid all that with a YMS. Automatically schedule docking times without the constant back-and-forth. Save hours, keep drivers in the loop and benefit from more predictable equipment dispatching.

Streamlined Check In or Gate Management

Every yard needs reliable check in and gate management processes to enhance safety and operational efficiency. Manual gate management is costly and time-consuming, requiring constant communication with drivers, managers and more. A YMS software solution like Conduit can alleviate some of the friction that occurs during check in.

Simplify things for drivers and your clerks with automation. Allow drivers to check in and check out on their own, while still collecting all necessary information. You can also verify appointments, direct drivers to their docks or yard spots and more, all without any human intervention.

Productive Task Management

Ditch the manual callouts and mass confusion. Every delivery is different, and your team must complete countless tasks. That includes moving trailers, counting inventory, performing yard checks, loading product and more. Traditionally, managers dole out tasks and make workers aware of their responsibilities.

A YMS platform can make a huge difference in yard operations, assigning and tracking all relevant tasks. It's a great way to keep teams in the loop, meet deadlines, avoid confusion and mitigate mistakes.

Seamless Integration

Yard management systems improve efficiency by providing real-time data. Access to that data helps with everything from scheduling to operations management. To get the most benefits, your YMS should seamlessly integrate with other systems via API, ensuring data integrity across the entire supply chain. A great YMS should integrate with your warehouse management system (WMS), transportation management system (TMS) and more.

Improved Efficiency

The biggest reason to adopt a YMS is to improve operational efficiency. The right software can automate many tasks while optimizing others, allowing managers and staff to work smarter. A YMS platform can reduce manual processes, mitigate errors and help your yard work faster. That can lead to greater throughput, more revenue and happier customers.

Enhanced Visibility and Control

The insights you collect with a YMS platform do more than just help improve efficiency. They can also facilitate more strategic decision-making. Use real-time data and analytics to spot potential issues, identify room for improvement and more. It can help you reduce costs, improve resource allocation and make fine logistical improvements that maximize efficiency.

Maximized Cost Efficiency

The many challenges in dock and yard management can lead to ballooning costs. YMS software can reduce costs by improving efficiency in every facet of your operation and aligning labor to your dock and yard schedule. It'll help you avoid idle time, prevent delays, optimize labor and more.

Improved Compliance and Security

Safety management and compliance audits can be stressful. However, a YMS platform like Conduit makes maintaining compliance a breeze. The software does the heavy lifting by providing accurate records of vehicle movement, yard activity, inventory and more. Systems like Conduit direct drivers via text message or mobile app, so drivers don’t have to get out of their cabs resulting in safer yards and more secure facilities.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is your top priority, and a YMS can strengthen customer relationships in many ways. The many capabilities of YMS software directly impact delivery times and overall service levels. By improving efficiency, you can get shipments in and out on time with zero delays. If there are issues, you'll know about them early, allowing you to take action or communicate with customers better.

Get Started With Conduit Today!

Turn the chaos of a poorly managed dock and yard into a masterclass of efficiency with Conduit! Conduit is the ultimate, all-in-one dock and yard management platform. It includes features that can transform your workflow, boost productivity and help you overcome many logistical challenges.

Take advantage of powerful automated features, data insights and more to improve every aspect of yard management. Rely less on outdated methodologies and utilize technology to work faster and more efficiently than ever. 

Contact the Conduit team to learn more and take your first steps toward successful yard management.