large yard, that’s a huge savings.”
Phillips says Zebra customers have seen
similar benefits. “Where we see most cus-
tomers pick up ROI is in the switchers—
equipment and labor—and subsequently
dispatching. We see a reduction of 30 to
50 percent in the number of switchers and
switch cabs.”
The system also speeds up processing at
the gate, he says, allowing reductions of 25
to 30 percent in gate personnel. Overall, he
says, the system helps eliminate manual
procedures, cutting processing times near-
ly in half.
Perhaps more important, users are
tracking every trailer every day, allowing
better management of the inventory in the
yard. That becomes particularly important
for trailers carrying perishable goods.
RTLS-enabled yard management systems,
for instance, can alert managers to refrigerated trailers waiting to be unloaded.
BEYOND ASSET TRACKING
As important as this type of asset tracking
may be, at least one observer believes that
YMS and RTLS have the potential to do
much more. Klappich of Gartner says that
savvy companies are finding ways to use the
technology to improve overall inventory
performance. “We are starting to see innovative companies use the yard as an extension
of the warehouse,” he reports. In particular,
he says, they’re using information provided
by these systems to help boost inventory
velocity, throughput, and cycle times.
“One of the things we’ve seen [in an
annual Gartner study] is that efficiency and
productivity are at the top of the priority
list, even beating out cost,” Klappich says.
“Most people think of labor productivity
first, and of course, that’s important. But
we’re also thinking about inventory efficien-
cy, and that gets to things like throughput
and cycle time issues. Inventory that is sit-
ting is not efficient. Minimizing the time it
sits can have a huge impact on the financials
of an organization.”
Gollu adds that yard management sys-
tems also allow users to collaborate across
organizations in an effort to improve
inventory management. For example, he
says, when a food manufacturer ships to a
grocer’s DC, a typical move includes sub-
stantial idle time. “If a trailer is idling for
12 to 14 hours at the source and the
same at the destination, that’s a day’s
worth of inventory we could take
out,” he argues.
“Why do they sit in the yard so
long? Typically, companies build in a
lot of slack. If you have real-time
accurate data [shared among shipper,
carrier, and receiver] on when a trail-
er started loading, when it left the
facility, and you know the drive time,
then you will know when it will
arrive and can unload quickly and
release it for the next shipment,” he
says. “You can take a half day out of
the order cycle.” ;
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