Five must-have features in a YMS

"Do you have a trailer logjam outside your distribution center that's slowing down operations? Are you using the trailers parked in your yard for overflow storage? Are you unable to quickly pinpoint which trailer has the goods that must be unloaded right away to fill an urgent order?" "...PINC Solutions, that use location technology to provide up-to-the-minute information on the whereabouts of a trailer."

The 5 features listed in the article are

1. Appointment scheduling. 

2. Alerts

3. User-defined rules.

4. Task management.

5. Event management integration.

DC Velocity does an excellent work educating the industry about the most current challenges and solutions. The five points mentioned in this article are definitely key when selecting a yard management solution. Industry experts have also been pointing out that without real-time visibility to trailers and shipments, companies will continue having time consuming yard audits, yard truck (“shunters”) drivers will continue wasting time trying to find where trailers are in the yards, and If the data entered in the system is not accurate, you are dealing with useless information, or as they say it in the industry “garbage in garbage out.”

Basic yard management systems, such as those that come with some WMS & TMS, or traditional yard management systems, such as the ones installed on-premise, are primarily focused on appointment scheduling and managing moves of trailers in the yard. It’s proven that these capabilities alone don’t solve the real challenges managers face in their yards. Additionally, in larger facilities these systems break down, since you simply cannot rely on user input alone to track the location of trailers and the status of shipments.

In larger facilities it is necessary to leverage data gathering automation, such as real-time location systems (RTLS), RFID and GPS, to increase velocity, push driver productivity, and to retain control over trailers and shipments. These systems have proven to be cost-effective, have low total cost of ownership, and provide rapid time to benefit.

Furthermore, if the goal is managing trailers and shipments, not just in one yard, but across the network and trading partner facilities to shorten cycle times, avoid manufacturing outages, avoid shrinkage, reduce inventory carrying and transportation costs, a hosted solution with automated data collection becomes imperative even in the smallest yard.

Lastly, enterprises like Kraft Foods, Kimberly-Clark, Exel, DSC Logistics, Supervalu, and many other Fortune-500 companies have realized that the yards, where trailers and shipments are dropped, were their last mile of the visibility gap in the supply chain. While they have made significant advances with their transportation and warehouse management systems, they have also realized that in the absence of real time, accurate trailer and shipment status information across their facilities, they could not really get full value for their investments.

The article is called "Supervalu feasts on yard visibility". According to the magazine, one of the nation's largest food retailers turned to technology to streamline its yard operations, improve docking capabilities, and shave a significant number of man hours from its daily processes-all while adding a critical layer of supply chain visibility.  

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