For most people in warehouse management, dock scheduling is an everyday task, but have you ever thought about how good are you at managing your dock timetables? Are you doing it in the most efficient and easy way? Here is the Dock scheduling tool that might help you!
Thanks to our customers and partners from all over the world, we were able to analyze different practices used for dock scheduling. As a result, we have identified three general levels of dock scheduling that can be applied to 95% of warehouses and distribution centres. Check out which level does your dock scheduling practices belong to and find out how good they are compared to thousands of others.
Level 1 - Manual Approach
The first dock scheduling level is defined by the dominant manual processes. This is when dock scheduling is fully based on manual and repetitive actions such as making phone calls or sending emails to book a dock and then writing down that information on a paper schedule.
With a manual approach, all information goes through a person - someone has to receive shipment details and manually forward or enter that information. Not surprisingly, this isn’t a very efficient way of working - people make errors entering information, miss phone calls, and forget to reply to emails.
This way of working requires a lot of coordination, responsiveness, attention to detail and often causes a lot of stress.
Level 2 - Semi-automated Approach
The second level is defined by the use of shared calendars and spreadsheets. Instead of calling or sending messages to inform about an incoming truck, people enter that information into a shared calendar or any other shared file. The most popular ones are Google calendar and Excel spreadsheets.
This approach is faster than the manual approach because dock booking is done directly by the carrier - warehouse employee no longer needs to receive that information and enter it. However, this approach is also prone to errors and it isn’t very flexible when it comes to various changes. The problem is that none of these tools was designed for dock scheduling operations. More on how inefficient manual dock scheduling is you can find in our blog "The Cost of Manual Dock Scheduling".
Dock scheduling can involve various constraints and rules that must be followed, it requires constant stakeholder communication, different editing access levels of the schedule, as well shipments contain sensitive information, that is important to collect, edit, and share. The part of the invoicing job, agreements, sharing shipment documents is still partly manual. Semi-automated approach to dock scheduling is like using the wrong tools to do the job.
Level 3 - Automated Approach
The third level is defined by the use of dedicated dock scheduling software. With it, there are no manual and repetitive tasks, the chance of errors is minimized and almost everything is automated. Warehouse manager needs to configure their warehouse schedule by setting desired rules or constraints and send out links to carriers. While carriers need to login and pick preferred and available delivery times. Dedicated Dock scheduling software automates most of the communication between the carrier, warehouse manager and driver. Also, the information might be seen by security and other third parties of the process. The software also can be integrated with other used systems to gain more synergy and efficiency.
Automate Your Dock Scheduling
So, where do you stand with your dock scheduling practices? If your dock scheduling practices look like they belong to level 1 or level 2, then you still have where to improve. It is also a good opportunity to improve your warehouse operations.
Typically, implementing Dock scheduling software reduces operational time by 70% and saves up to 40% of transportation costs. Cut your manual work, cut truck queues and penalties for the delays and holdbacks.
Are you considering getting a Dock scheduling software? Read our blog "Arguments For and Against Getting a Dock Scheduling Platform" and find out if it is the right fit for your company.
Talk with our experts to find out more!
