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Good planning, scheduling, and communication can help keep freight flowing smoothly and efficiently through your docks.
Dock congestion happens. Shippers large and small can find themselves with backed-up orders waiting to be shipped out, trucks sitting in the yards, and stacks of pallets that do nothing more than get in everyone's way.
But it doesn't have to be like that. With a well thought-out, organized plan for managing space, traffic flow, labor, and scheduling, shippers can find fast relief from the aches and pains of common dock congestion.
Dock Space is Gold
If there's a single mantra to keep in mind when trying to alleviate dock congestion, it's this: Dock space is gold. Every compromised inch of dock space impacts efficiency, productivity, and costs, so keeping as much space as possible open and available should be one of your primary objectives.
That's why it's essential to know as precisely as possible what will be coming in to your receiving dock-having that information in advance will allow you to determine how much space you'll need to dedicate to each job.
"You need to know everything that's inbound to you, when it's going to arrive, and where it's going," says Will Taylor, senior engineer for LTL carrier Averitt Express in Cookeville, Tenn. "With that [information] you can make sure you've got a place to put the delivery so it doesn't land on the dock."
It's important to keep in mind that some types of shipments will require more dock space than others, says Geoff Sisko, senior vice president with warehousing consultants Gross & Associates in Woodbridge, N.J. A containerized load coming in from overseas, for example, may need two doors' worth of space to lay out and sort. "If you have to strip a container manually and palletize and sort it, you've got to be able to lay out enough pallets to do so down on the dock," he says. "If you've got two container loads coming in, you don't schedule them for adjacent doors because they're stealing space from each other."
Besides keeping dock space open, it's important to manage how goods move to or from your docks while they're inside the warehouse. For one thing, it's helpful to establish specific traffic lanes for...