DC Velocity - November 2010

technologyreview

Supply Chain Solutions.) All of the DCs except the Calgary facility use the YMS.

The YMS purchase was part of a
wholesale supply chain redesign and
overhaul that dates back nearly a
decade. In 2001, Canadian Tire
began taking steps to expand its dis-
tribution network’s capacity and
streamline operations in order to
keep up with burgeoning sales. As
part of that initiative, it installed a
new order management system,
upgraded its warehouse manage-
ment system (WMS), established a
new DC in Calgary, and, in 2005,

Save Space and Increase Throughput.

implemented the yard management soft-
ware. “The YMS was part of a broad ini-
tiative, called Customer Link, that was
about upgrading technology and increas-
ing capacity,” says Fast. “It [the YMS] was
a capacity requirement.”
The purchase was the culmination of a
yearlong YMS selection process that con-
cluded with a one-week pilot with the two
finalists. During that week, Canadian Tire
evaluated both systems’ performance on a
variety of scenarios, including unloading
and scheduling, trailer positioning and
staging, tracking trailers in the yard, and
viewing the location of equipment in real
time. “The service providers had a chance
to demonstrate how their software would
address our business needs,” says Fast.
“We sent the vendors a binder with vari-
ous scenarios that we wanted to see the
software execute.”
Based on the results of the pilot, the
company chose Yard Smart, a yard man-
agement package from Montreal-based
C3 Solutions. That application has since
been integrated with Canadian Tire’s
WMS as well as the legacy systems used
for general business.

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VERTICAL CONVEYING SOLUTIONS

More than a scheduling tool

What prompted Canadian Tire to consider a YMS in the first place was the growing complexity of its yard operations. The two Toronto DCs have more than 450 doors and a combined yard capacity of 5,600 trailers. The Montreal DC has parking for 1,750 trailers and 452 spaces for containers, which can be stacked up to three high if necessary.

All three yards are a hive of activity, with trucks arriving and departing on a steady basis. Some of those trucks are operated by for-hire carriers; others are part of Canadian Tire’s private fleet. (The company operates one of the largest private fleets in Canada, with more than 13,000 pieces of equipment.) On an average 10-hour shift, a team of 10 to 12 “shunt” drivers moves four to five hundred trailers in each yard, repositioning the equipment. And as the operations have grown busier over time, the more complicated the scheduling has become.