A Comprehensive Guide to Dock Scheduling

for Warehouses and 3PLs in 2023

As the logistics landscape continues to evolve in 2023, warehouses
and third-party logistics (3PL) providers are faced with increasing
pressure to optimize their operations and adapt to the fast-paced
demands of the industry. One area that has become increasingly
important for efficient yard and warehouse management is dock
scheduling. This is because many warehouses use outdated systems
that open their operation up to liability, fines, lost revenue, and general
errors that could be easily mitigated with a strong dock scheduling
system.

What is Dock Scheduling?

Dock scheduling is the process of assigning specific time slots for
trucks to arrive at a warehouse or yard for loading or unloading cargo.
It helps to streamline operations by minimizing congestion and wait
times, ensuring that loading docks, equipment, and staff are all used
efficiently. An effective dock scheduling system takes into account
various factors, such as shipment volume, available resources, and
carrier preferences, to create an optimal schedule that maximizes
throughput and minimizes detention fees.

There are several common ways to implement dock scheduling in a

warehouse:

 Manual Scheduling: This method involves using paper-based

(sometimes whiteboards) or spreadsheet-based systems to record and
manage appointments. Although it may work for small-scale operations, it
can be time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient for larger warehouses
as it often doesn’t allow for automation or integration with other
warehouse management software.
 In-House Dock Scheduling Software: These are dedicated software
solutions designed specifically for managing the dock scheduling of a
 specific business. They can help to automate scheduling, track
appointments, and provide real-time visibility into dock availability and can
be good for complex dock and yard operations. The downside is these
are often costly solutions and often don’t have easy trouble-shooting
solutions if something goes awry.
 Cloud-based or SaaS Solutions: Opposite to in-house solutions, cloud-
based or software as a service (SaaS) dock scheduling solutions provide
flexibility, scalability, and ease of implementation. These solutions can be
accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy to
manage and monitor dock scheduling in real-time. They often offer
features such as automated scheduling, real-time visibility, and analytics
for data-driven decision-making.
 WMS with Dock Scheduling Module: Some warehouse management
system (WMS) software options include a dock scheduling component as
part of their suite of tools. This allows for seamless integration with other
warehouse functions, such as inventory management, order picking, and
shipping. The dock scheduling module can help to automate appointment
scheduling, optimize dock allocation, and improve communication
between warehouse personnel and carriers.
 TMS Integration: Some transportation management system (TMS)
solutions also offer dock scheduling functionality. By integrating your TMS
with your warehouse operations, you can streamline the entire supply
chain process, from carrier selection and rate negotiation to dock
scheduling and shipment tracking.

The Importance of Dock Scheduling

In the modern logistics landscape, effective dock scheduling is
essential for several reasons:

 Reducing wait times: By allocating specific time slots for trucks,

warehouses and 3PLs can minimize the time drivers spend waiting for
loading or unloading, thus reducing detention fees and enhancing overall
efficiency.
 Improving resource allocation: Dock scheduling helps warehouses and
3PLs plan ahead and allocate resources more effectively, ensuring that
the right personnel and equipment are available when needed.
 Enhancing customer satisfaction: Efficient dock scheduling can lead to
faster turnaround times, helping warehouses and 3PLs meet customer
expectations and maintain a competitive edge in the industry.
 Mitigating risks: Proper dock scheduling can reduce the likelihood of
accidents and safety incidents caused by congestion and disorganization
in the yard.

Key Components of an Effective Dock

Scheduling System
A robust dock scheduling system should include the following
components:

 User-friendly interface: A user-friendly interface makes it easy for

warehouse staff, carriers, and drivers to access and interact with the
system, facilitating smooth communication and coordination.
 Real-time visibility: A dock scheduling system should provide real-time
visibility into the status of dock appointments, allowing users to monitor
progress, identify potential issues, and adjust as needed.
 Integration with existing systems: The dock scheduling system
should integrate seamlessly with existing WMS, TMS, and other relevant
software, ensuring streamlined data flow and decision-making.
 Reporting and analytics: The system should offer comprehensive
reporting and analytics features, enabling users to track key performance
indicators (KPIs), identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to
improve operations.
 Scalability and adaptability: As warehouses and 3PLs grow and
evolve, their dock scheduling system should be able to scale and adapt
accordingly, accommodating changes in volume, resources, and
processes.
Symptoms Pointing to the Need for a
Dock Scheduling Platform
Congested loading ramps. Do you have times when your yard looks more
like a truck dealership, with trucks parked on every corner? Congested
loading ramps and long truck queues are the number one indication that your
operation needs a Dock scheduling platform.

Unhappy drivers and carriers. Unplanned and long waiting times at the
warehouse does not make anybody’s life easier. Your warehouse is just one
of many stops for a driver that day and carriers usually need to keep a tight
schedule.

Penalties and missed cargoes. You receive fines for late loadings, you get
penalties from your carriers and you miss cargos due to congestion at the
warehouse or insufficient loading capacity.

Limited warehouse capacity. Most warehouses have their loading capacity

constraints. Whether it is the number of docks, people, working time or
available equipment, any of these constraints can quickly create a small fire in
your day-to-day operations.

Most of businesses face a late supply arrivals problem. We have prepared a

blog on how to avoid it. Read "How can You Ensure Supplies Arrival on
Time?"

With Warehouse management platform such as GoRamp it is easy to keep order in your warehouse

Unbalanced workload at the warehouse. Your warehouse spends the first

half of the day relaxed and the second half like it is black Friday. Drivers are
complaining, time is running out and nothing is done on time. Personnel gets
stressed, mistakes start happening and in the end, no one is happy.

Carriers are late. Let’s not forget that truck queues at docks are also caused
by carriers that miss their delivery times. It is perfectly fine to be late from time
to time, but if it becomes a regular carrier behaviour, you’ll have a constant
problem. Analytics from a Dock scheduling platform can be used to identify
such behaviour.
Everything is done manually. Non-stop calls, endless spreadsheets and
tons of emails to book a dock, inform stakeholders or make last-minute
changes. All this manual communication, information entering, and distribution
take a lot of precious time and are bound for human errors.

Lack of traceability. When information is mainly stored in emails and paper

documents it becomes difficult to look back at past events and analyze them.
After a busy day, you won’t have exact information on which truck arrived on
time or which carrier was late and disrupted your loading schedule.

Signs that a dock scheduling platform is

not for your operation
Low number of cargoes or reservations. If your warehouse does not
receive or ship a lot of cargos, there is a chance that a Dock scheduling
platform is not for you. Don’t get us wrong, you could still use a Dock
scheduling platform and improve your operations by eliminating certain
manual tasks. Our experience shows, that Dock scheduling platform benefits
are felt for operations that handle from 10 trucks per day. After all, a Dock
scheduling platform is an investment that should pay back for itself after some
time.

Just-in-time loading. You have trucks lined up and waiting for your
production to manufacture products. Trucks queues happen not because of
insufficient loading capabilities or poor organizational processes but simply
because there are no products to load. If your products are loaded the minute
they are ready, you might not need a Dock scheduling platform. In such a
case, the bottleneck is your production and not your warehouse.

Same day production and shipping. You manufacture and ship products on
the same day you get the order. This way, you do not know how many orders
you will have the next day, when they will be ready for shipping and how many
trucks will need to visit your warehouse that day. Using a Dock scheduling
platform for this type of operation will require a lot of rescheduling, cancelling
or ordering last-minute pickups.

Specific and quick loading process. If your loading process is specific, such
as loading truck tankers, or it is fast, simple and takes 5 minutes, then Dock
scheduling platform probably won’t make your life easier.
What Level of Automation is Right for
Your Warehouse?
How weighing widely varying degrees of MHE can get you into trouble.
February 10, 2021
Mark Hasler

Have you ever heard a client say, “We would like to explore LOW, MEDIUM, and HIGH
automation solutions for a particular warehouse design”? This is a common scenario
where end-users are considering varying levels of mechanization for their operation.
Having a stepped approach seems logical, but why is it that, when presented with three
options, the middle or medium level is chosen more often than not? Is this the right
approach or could end-users be unintentionally steering themselves towards wrong
technologies?

To better understand what LOW, MEDIUM, and HIGH automation applications entail,
let’s take a closer look at each to determine the right level of automation you need.

LOW

The LOW automation solution is a labor dependent operation with entry level assisted
picking technologies. These include tools such as handheld scanners, voice picking,
pick-to-light, and order picking trucks. They are relatively quick to adopt and easy to
change if needed. These technologies are commonplace for companies evolving from a
previously basic operation. However, companies will find these solutions are still highly
dependent on human labor for order fulfillment.

MEDIUM

The MEDIUM solution brings in conveyance, sortation, pick modules, AMR’s, etc. and is
often the option requiring the most dedication of resources because it is not fully reliant
on labor nor automation to run the show. Designs are a coordination of different material
handling equipment and methods that are dependent upon each other to run efficiently.
Depending on the scope, it can be relatively quick to implement (usually less
than six months) or extend beyond a year for larger implementations. Installed systems
tend to be fixed and can be challenging to scale and change over time. While
automation completes a portion of the tasks, order fulfillment is still dependent on
human labor.

HIGH

The HIGH automation option minimizes labor as much as possible and is reliant upon
robotics, AS/RS, and other integrated technologies to have strong up-times. A turnkey
operation can sometimes take a year or more to implement and go live. Considerable
upfront design and engineering efforts are to be expected but require minimal resources
once up and running. Highly automated solutions are relatively permanent but tend to
be flexible and quick to scale. Solutions offering HIGH automation typically involve
robots taking over most labor needed to complete tasks. While human labor is
still necessary on a smaller scale, highly redundant tasks and strenuous operations are
minimized allowing operators to perform more value-added services.

Choosing the right one

Out of the three options presented above, the medium solution may seem to be the
most risk averse. The client is investing in neither too much nor too little automation. To
them, it may appear to be a safe-play middle ground offering that will deliver
incremental gains in efficiency, throughput, and labor.

Unfortunately, what clients do not account for is the complexity of implementing a

solution that is reliant upon both manual and automated elements to run efficiently. If
one component fails to operate as expected, the whole operation suffers. Another
unforeseen is the high amount of preventative maintenance required to maintain
systems with more than one single-point-of-failure. Permanent half-baked solutions can
lead to a lifetime of perpetual re-designs and tweaks to “get it right.”

With the continued explosion of e-commerce and the emerging trends in micro-
fulfillment, distribution centers are migrating closer and closer to the end consumer.
Robotics and AS/RS will play a crucial role, enabling the storage density, efficiencies,
and speed-to-market that clients seek to achieve. Priorities on safety and quality of work
life will call for less labor-intensive processes, helping to further justify capital
expenditures for automated systems.

Although these highly automated solutions are the way of the future, it all comes down
to asking the right questions and supplying sufficient data to perform proper analysis. It
is important to choose a system integrator or consultant that takes an agnostic
approach, recommending the best technologies and solution set for your unique
operation, and not just a generic LOW, MEDIUM, and HIGH offering.

When does automation make sense in the

warehouse?

Gradations in warehouse automation

For many companies, the topic of warehouse/logistics automation is high on the
agenda. But all beginnings are difficult and many rack their brains over which
automation level is the right one for their warehouse logistics deployment scenario. We'll
get to the bottom of this question and present you with the biggest differences between
the various gradations. Warehouse processes can be automated to varying degrees
and in different ways. For primary warehouse processes, such as putaway and order
picking, a distinction is made between three automation levels, which are differentiated
according to their degree of mechanization .

The three levels of automation:

1. manual warehouse
In a manual or conventional warehouse, all operations are performed by humans, for
example with forklifts or lifting/transport equipment. At this warehouse automation level,
warehouse automation only includes employee control via a warehouse management
system (WMS, e.g. SAP EWM). This takes over the planning, optimization and control
of all manual processes. For example, the warehouse management system takes into
account the departure times of the truck and plans the upcoming picking tasks so that
the right goods are ready at the right time at the right loading ramp. The employees
receive instructions via screen displays (e.g. handheld or vehicle terminals), mobile
devices, devices with voice recognition or data glasses.

2. partially automated warehouse

In a partially automated warehouse, only individual and not all work steps are
automated to achieve economical operating processes. Depending on the
application, partial automation may be a better fit for the given requirements than a
manual or fully automated warehouse. For example, the following can be controlled and
linked to the warehouse management system: narrow-aisle stackers, order pickers and
reach trucks. A control system for narrow-aisle trucks, for example, makes it possible to
automatically drive to the next picking location, so that employees no longer have to
search, drive and maneuver themselves in this warehouse automation model.
Partially automated solutions such as warehouse lifts can significantly improve and
accelerate processes, especially in cost-intensive order picking. A further expansion
stage can also be innovative picking processes such as gesture-controlled picking
(Pick-by-Motion®): These guide employees through the process even more intensively
than classic methods such as Pick-by-Voice. Picking confirmation is possible with a
simple gesture and keyboard or voice input is no longer required.

3. fully automated warehouse

In the third level of warehouse automation, a fully automated warehouse, no or at least
comparatively few human operations are required. As a rule, these warehouses consist
of racks and stacker cranes or shuttles that store and retrieve pallets, totes or cartons of
goods fully automatically.
When you get right down to it, a warehouse where picking takes place cannot really be
called a fully automated operation: after all, employees are still needed at the picking
stations to put together the right number of items. However, the employees no longer
have to go to the goods, because the goods come to them ("goods-to-person"
principle). The complete automation of article picking is still very complex, for example,
because of the different shapes and dimensions of the articles. However, such systems
are already available for picking or case picking homogeneous items (e.g. Pick-by-
Robot®). These innovations aim to automate even this last work step. Then we can
really talk about full automation of the warehouse.

Conclusion
Depending on the application, different warehouse/logistics automation levels are
suitable. Therefore, there is no one right choice. Companies often opt for a level of
automation that is tailored to their individual needs: this can be a combination of
manual, partially and/or fully automated systems. It is important to ensure that all
operations are planned and controlled by a warehouse management system (such as
SAP EWM) so that all the components used work together as a single system.
For more info on warehouse automation and logistics planning, visit www.igz.com/sap-
automation/logistikplanung/.
For more info on the differences between automated and manual picking, see the blog
post "Commissioning systems in comparison".
Curious or have questions about warehouse automation? If you are currently
considering automating your intralogistics, feel free to contact us or join us live at one of
our webinars. There you will gain insights into already realized projects and learn how
we have solved demanding challenges in the logistics and production environment
based on SAP standard software together with our customers.

Four types of warehouse

automation explained
July 19, 2022
Warehouse automation is a complex and diverse
field – there isn’t a single solution that will work
perfectly for every organisation.
There are different types of warehouse automation – from basic to advanced
– involving a variety of different technologies that can be used, and specific
processes that can be automated, depending on your warehouse setup and
objectives.

Warehouse automation can also refer to more than just the storage and
retrieval of goods. A range of “back room” tasks, such as order management,
inventory management and reporting can also be automated.

Contact us to discover how your business can benefit from warehouse

automation solutions from Element Logic

Generally, there are four main types of warehouse automation which will be
discussed in more detail below.

1. Basic automation
This level of warehouse automation is the most rudimentary and can include
operations like scanning picked items and a basic conveyer system to bring
the items from point A to point B. More traditional inventory transportation
vehicles, such as forklifts, can also be included in this group.

A key advantage to this type of automation is its simplicity. Therefore, if a

company has no prior experience with automating warehouse operations, this
level would be a good place to start. The sparse nature of the solutions means
they are also relatively cheap to implement.

However, this option still requires a fair amount of human labour to ensure
demands are met. For example, the basic conveyer systems used here may
be consistent, but their inflexibility means that they are difficult to scale as
operations grow, and they still require a number of workers on the floor to
ensure the operation runs smoothly.
2. System automation
This type of warehouse automation involves software-based automation as
well as physical automation. Typically, this variant makes use of a
Warehouse Control System (WCS). The WCS is data-driven and makes it
easier for operators to coordinate the identification and picking of orders.
Furthermore, it allows firms to easily produce high quality performance
reports, and therefore make more informed, intelligent business decisions.

Some warehouses also use voice-assisted technologies. This typically

involves equipping floor workers with headsets to receive simple voice
commands – a direct line between the command systems (in this case the
WCS) and the warehouse floor. Operators also have a line to communicate
back and, having arrived to pick an item, must verify a code to ensure that
they are in the correct section of the warehouse.

A key advantage to this warehouse automation example is, by virtue of its

data-driven approach, the positive impact it can have on decision making.
Having a wealth of easy-to-access data means warehouse processes can be
organised more intelligently, with an improved ability to track progress.

However, in order to be truly effective, system automation needs to be paired

with physical automation (movement of orders), otherwise warehouses will
continue to rely more than is necessary on manual labour.

3. Mechanised automation
When someone hears the word “automation”, this is likely what they think of.
Mechanised automation involves the use of robotics to aid humans in the
retrieval and transportation of inventory items. At this level of automation,
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) start to become prevalent.
These systems are quite varied but, in general, they all have a basic function
– delivering the correct items to the correct operator or workstation.

Although an ASRS can involve a rather large upfront investment, it is likely to

show swift returns and, in some instances, costs can be recovered in just a
couple of years. This is due to their scalability and ability to adapt to whatever
space is available. A modular approach, which can only be offered by a
system like AutoStore, means different components can be easily added to
suit the specific needs (or limitations) of the warehouse.
Two other non-ASRS robotics system worth mentioning are Automatic Guided
Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). The AGVs’ job is to
transport items across the warehouse. While they do reduce dependence on
human labour, they require a decent amount of space to operate in and can
only travel down set paths. This means their usage is mainly confined to large,
simple warehouse setups, making them a less dynamic option.

AMRs, on the other hand, are a more intelligent solution. These robots can
navigate a warehouse floor independently, allowing for greater flexibility. If a
warehouse is smaller and/or has a more complex setup, this is a better option
than using AGVs. However, both carry health and safety risks. Being
autonomous, AMRs in particular carry increased risk of causing accidents on
the warehouse floor. There is also the issue of both solutions having limited
loading capacities.

4. Advanced automation
The final type of warehouse automation to cover is advanced automation.
While it is considered a category here, it basically involves the combination of
all previous types, resulting in a very sophisticated level of automation. The
marriage of system and mechanical automation would create a complete end-
to-end automation of the order fulfilment process – something that would
ordinarily require a significant amount of human labour.

Automation on this scale would involve a total synergy between data-driven

system automation and autonomous units on the warehouse floor. An
example of this would be an advanced “wave picking” system. This system
delivers items in intervals (waves) that correspond to variables such as order
number or delivery destination. The system also allows firms to home in on
targets, like hitting a certain number of orders in a week. Combining this
system with robotic equipment, such as AMRs, would be considered an
advanced level of automation.

Although this setup can yield high levels of both efficiency and investment
return, the initial cost is going to be a barrier for many smaller firms. Such a
high level of automation comes at a considerable price and, therefore, this
kind of “total automation” is rarely seen outside of large, omnichannel retail
warehouse operations.

Automation to suit all levels

It should now be clearer that automation as a concept is highly variable –
there’s no “one size fits all” approach here. A small warehouse operation does
not necessarily need the same level of automation that a highly complex,
omnichannel delivery service does.

With all this in mind, all operations could certainly benefit from implementing a
certain degree of automation in order to drive greater efficiency and growth.
Therefore, the question is not so much whether automation is desirable or not,
rather what kind of automation is right for which stage.