Warehouse efficiency and dock management
September 1st 2008 Improving delivery times and delivery accuracy,
increasing inventory turns and reducing operating
costs are daily challenges for supply chain
professionals. Today, dock areas are often
bottlenecks in the supply chain process. Crawford
has developed a system for efficient coordination of
truck traffic and warehouse operations
Trucks can spend more than 25% of
their time waiting for available doors
at which to dock. Yet, increasing
efficiency by monitoring the activity on the
docking bays is an area that is overlooked
by many logistics companies. Now this
area no longer needs to remain a blind
spot, comments Crawford.
Crawford is a leading international
provider of door and logistics solutions with
a large portfolio of products in door and
logistics solutions, and has a large service
offer. The company has now expanded its
offer to include Dock Management.
The challenge – reduce waiting
time and increase capacity
The main challenge for supply chain
professionals is having the goods at the
right place at the right time. Efficient
handling saves time and money both for
the shipping companies and the carriers,
who can waste a large amount of their
time waiting for loading and unloading at
available dock bays. To solve this
problem, some companies extend the
opening hours of their facilities to increase
capacity. Yet, this solution means
additional costs, i.e. for hiring more
personnel. A better solution to increase
capacity is to monitor the flow of truck
traffic to available dock bays. This has
now been made possible with the
Crawford 101 Dock Management.
Plan capacity with forecasts
By forecasting the movement of goods, the
carriers can plan their capacity according
to the expected needs. In order to carry out
this forecast, a great deal of statistics need
to be collected; this includes the flow of
goods, loading and occupancy time and
sequences per loading bay at the
warehouses or logistics centers. These
statistics are important input for estimating
the capacity needed in terms of truckloads
and warehouse space, which in turn
provide more accurate forecasts.
Evaluate performance
To make the handling of goods more
efficient, shippers not only evaluate the
performance of the carriers, but also how
well their own operations and facilities
meet the requirements of the carriers. With
the Crawford 101 Dock Management,
important information about facility
performance can be extracted to be used
in this evaluation.
Mastering temperature controlled logistics
Kraftverkehr Nagel operates temperature
controlled logistics centers in Germany,
Belgium and Italy. The logistics center in
Germany has a total size of 50,000 square
meters and mainly handles fresh food like
meat and milk products. The facility works in
two shifts with a time overlap of staff to have
the full manpower on site at peak times. In a
temperature-controlled facility, each opened
door generates energy losses equivalent to
3kW. Monitoring the position of the door is a
must, and Kraftverkehr Nagel has equipping
its facilities with the Crawford 101 Dock
Management to monitor the doors and the
cooling status of the warehouse. Energy
losses are now detected centrally and
visualised in real time so that
countermeasures can be taken immediately.
Supervision by third party
Another logistics company who has
realised the benefits of monitoring its dock
operations already had extensive facility
management in place but lacked
monitoring of its docking bays. Crawford
101 Dock Management could be
connected to the facility management
system which is being supervised by a third
party supplier, who can now also supervise
the docking operations. This was made
possible by the standardised OPC interface
used in Crawford 101 Dock Management.
How it works
Each docking bay, which has Crawford
doors, shelters and dock levellers,
includes a control box that is the key to
extracting the information used for Dock
Management. Each control box can be
connected to send a status update every
three seconds to a computer.
Four Crawford 101 Dock Management
modules are available:
Navigation – module for the control of
the fleet of trucks in the whole loading
area. The planning operator is kept
informed of what is happening at the bays
in real time. Trucks are led to available
loading bays. The bays are reserved until
the trucks arrive and they are automatically
set free when the trucks leave. This cuts
waiting times for operations and trucks and
reduces errors in allocating loading bays.
Monitoring – module for the exact
measuring of loading times, occupancy
times and sequences per loading bay. This
module allows exact planning and
optimising of loading bays.
Service – module for scheduling
maintenance activity and avoiding chaos
at the bays. Information related to the
maintenance need of the loading bay is
available real time in the planning and
operation departments. The planning
operator is sure to send trucks to bays that
are available.
Security – module with a safety and
alarm system that controls, monitors and
records the opening of the doors and the
function of the dock levellers. It is possible
to supply interfaces to alarm services and
to facility management. Doors can More articles from Crawford UK Ltd: | 
