DC Velocity - October 2019

In the “connected warehouse,” machines, technology, and people communicate, share data, and take action based on that information. This trend is well underway—witness the accelerating adoption of robotics, sensors, and remote diagnostics for everything from forklifts to order picking. But one critical area has not yet joined the connected warehouse “party,” so to speak: the loading dock. Managing dock operations has largely relied on observation and informal reporting—and sometimes blind faith that everything’s working as it’s supposed to, when it’s supposed to.

No longer. New 4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock, part of the cloud-based warehouse monitoring and management platform 4SIGHTTM Connect, fills those information gaps. The solution gives managers and supervisors previously unavailable insights, allowing them not only to respond to events as they happen, but also to create reports for longer-range planning and analysis, says Michael Eastabrook, President, Loading Dock Products at Kelley parent company Entrematic. For warehouses and distribution centers (DCs) serving high-volume, time-sensitive industries like retail and e-commerce, this is a game-changing advantage.

4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock integrates docks into the Internet of Things (IoT) by utilizing data from Kelley’s Digital Master Control Panel, which collects and stores information for each dock door, leveler, and vehicle restraint by dock position. The control panels wirelessly communicate data via a cellular gateway to the cloud-based software platform, where the user interface resides and data are stored. This architecture has important advantages. The system is designed to be independent; the panels and gateway communicate through an independent network and therefore don’t have to interface with a facility’s existing IT infrastructure or Wi-Fi. And because the platform is cloud-based, customers can use any inter-net-connected device to access the 4SIGHTTM Connect Dashboard from anywhere.

4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock offers numerous benefits and opportu-
nities. Examples include:
b Real-time monitoring. Users can see equipment details, status,
truck time at dock, equipment overrides, and alarm condition for
all docks in real time. Managers and supervisors can quickly take
corrective action when needed.
b Real-time alerts. “Smart” rules trigger an email alert when
user-specified events occur. For example, supervisors can choose
to be notified about restraint errors and overrides. The system can
also be configured to allow them to remotely authorize overrides.
b Visibility into dock equipment operation. Reports such as the
number of cycles for each piece of equipment, dock utilization
rates, and load times (from restraint engage to restraint release)
help managers uncover inefficiencies and better manage mainte-
nance and upkeep. Visibility into dock overuse and/or underuse,
for instance, allows workloads to be spread more evenly, reducing
wear and tear on equipment.

b Actionable data for planning and analysis. 4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock’s dashboard lets managers view historical data and generate reports to identify patterns and problems. For example, users can create a report that shows how many times, when, and where restraint overrides occurred.

It’s critical for high-volume warehouses, DCs, and order-fulfillment centers to identify and eliminate sources of inefficiency. Cloud-based 4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock helps them do exactly that by providing visibility into day-to-day operations, including “issues on their docks that they may not even realize are happening,” Eastabrook says.

There’s more to come. The platform can easily incorporate new features the company develops based on learnings from the field and make them available to all users. Eastabrook and his team are also working on “future proofing” the loading dock—ensuring that docks keep pace with changing technology. Just one example: As autonomous highway trucks and forklifts are more widely adopted, “the loading dock will need the ability to communicate dock-equip-ment status to those automated systems,” he observes.

4SIGHTTM Connect - Dock is well positioned to help customers prepare for the future. Eastabrook sums up: The solution “moves loading dock decisions from the subjective to the objective. We think we’ll learn a lot about loading docks that we may not have understood fully before.”