More than one in ten loadings (11%) at warehouses need to be rescheduled throughout the day, according to a survey by transport software firm Transporean.

The survey, conducted by Transporeon and ARC Advisory Group, also revealed a significant technology gap in yard operations, with nearly two-thirds of respondents handling their rescheduling completely manually.

Furthermore, 16% of respondents said they did not have a digital time slot management application, making it difficult for them to account for trucks arriving ahead or behind time, making peaks and delays of arrivals unpredictable.

The survey identified a lack of predictability and planning to be the second biggest cause of wait times, after peaks and troughs of arriving vehicles. Communication problems, were also cited by participants as a major problem.

In response to this market demand for better planning, Transporean has expanded its real time yard management (RTYM) solution with a new smart re-planning feature, which enables warehouse workers and managers to instantly react to short-term changes on the day of delivery or pickup.

The solution allows customers to re-plan scheduled appointments to another time or another location on any given day, saving costs caused by waiting times and preventing poorly synchronized assets and ineffective dock planning.

Transporean has found that on average, survey respondents were able to reduce their daily waiting times by more than one hour solely by using the time slot management application. RTYM users also receive a continuously updated overview of incoming and outgoing transports.

Transporeon chief executive Stephan Sieber said: “Over the last few years, time slot management tools have been used to plan for loading and unloading. When the time slot is booked, that are usually hours, if not days, before the process happens, and in between, delays and changes can happen.

“When companies combine the planning aspect of time slot management with real-time visibility data, they can use the platform to update loading and unloading sequences to optimize these processes in real-time. This leads to benefits for all participants.”

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