In a warehouse, appointments are created for dock doors that
are used for loading and unloading of goods. This process is called dock
scheduling.
A high turnover warehouse needs its dock doors to be
utilized in an optimal way. This is especially important if we have a design
that fosters dual purpose dock doors (both loading and unloading can happen
through the same dock door). In order to get an optimal use we must understand
and incorporate the volume and nature of work along with the inventory requirements
to feed in for the loading, which can come in the just arrived trailer and in
such cases unloading of this trailer has to take precedence over the loading
activity in order to have better fill rate.
Scientific appointment scheduling can help in a positive way
to manage the dock door schedules when fed with relevant and right data to dock
scheduling tool. Dock scheduling tool can create optimal dock door plan by
taking into account the workload for the day and their priorities and
interlinking. This will make the warehouse to have a seamless operation
throughout the productive hours of it.
A step ahead in dock door scheduling is dynamic scheduling
with center of gravity calculations for the workload for the underlying
transportation equipment. Say for example, if a receiving trailer is about to
be checked into the warehouse, a large warehouse with 50 + dock doors, where to
check in the trailer is an important factor for productivity. If the unloading
trailer has inventory mostly skewed for a putaway of them at one end of the
warehouse, checking in such a trailer in the other end of warehouse takes a
huge toll on warehouse throughput and productivity metrics. Similarly if an
outbound trailer has most of its pick in a particular area of the warehouse,
docking the trailer closer to that area will reduce travel time and increase
efficiency.
