How Dock Scheduling Benefits the Paper Packaging Industry

From sourcing raw materials to delivering finished products, every aspect of the paper packaging supply chain needs to run on time to meet tight deadlines and keep costs in check. It’s a competitive business to be in. And, if you’re running a shipping operation within the industry, you probably know how managing your dock goes a long way toward either helping or hurting your company’s success.

This is especially true for ‘old-school’ dock operations because manually coordinating inbound and outbound loads is cumbersome, prone to delays, and can lead to many extra expenses such as detention fees. Thankfully, companies today aren’t limited to traditional ways of running things. Digital dock scheduling software such as Opendock can quickly transition warehouse docks from chaos into well-oiled machines.

Are you unsure if a digital dock scheduling solution can help you? Here are some common challenges the technology overcomes that you may find familiar as well as other ways it can help your logistics operations.

Common Logistics Challenges of the Paper Packaging Industry

In almost every industry, late shipments create significant problems. Worse yet, such delays at any point in the supply chain can create a domino effect, with some entirely out of anyone’s control. Factors like dock congestion, unpredictable weather, and transportation disruptions cause shipments to arrive late, impacting your production schedules and deliveries (and, ultimately, customer satisfaction). Supply chains are more global and connected than ever.

Other concerns, such as price fluctuations in raw materials like pulp, chemicals, or even energy, add to the cost and supply chain uncertainty for industry companies. The unpredictable nature of cost increases can impact budgets and the bottom line. Decisions related to sourcing can also impact where products and materials are shipped from, further complicating logistics decision-making and costs.

There are also ever-mounting environmental considerations because sustainability is on everyone’s mind — consumers and businesses alike. The result is a large amount of cost and customer pressure to create products and supply chains with minimum environmental impact.

In other words, a lot goes into the logistics supply chain of every paper packaging company. With operational and cost efficiency at the top of companies’ lists of priorities, shipping docks can play a significant role in helping companies streamline their operations and reduce their ecological footprint.

What Is Digital Dock Scheduling?

Dock scheduling software, such as Opendock, is an easy and cost-effective solution to remove delays and uncertainty from your supply chain. As we highlighted earlier, managing a dock on clipboards or spreadsheets leaves too much room for error and delays. Instead of a traditional, manual process, digital dock scheduling software streamlines critical details and processes like assigning timeslots and dock doors for incoming and outgoing shipments.

Opendock’s user-friendly scheduling interfacet allows carriers to book dock appointments online. It’s self-serve, available 24/7, and offers real-time visibility into dock availability. Inbound carriers can provide essential details about their shipments, allowing warehouses to factor in things like pallet counts so they’re prepared and able to minimize driver dwell time. Carriers arriving for outbound loads know when and where the loads can be picked up at the facility and all the other important shipment details. Perhaps most importantly, everyone is updated because the system sends notifications and reminders to all parties.

How Opendock Helps Paper Packaging Warehouses

Opendock offers a comprehensive solution to some of the unique challenges faced by the industry. With its advanced features, you can improve efficiency, reduce unbudgeted operating costs (such as detention and overtime labor), and optimize your dock operations.

Here are five of the many ways Opendock helps deliver benefits:

1. Minimizing Shipping Delays

Late deliveries can break a supply chain (and sometimes whole companies) by disrupting production schedules and affecting customers. Opendock helps to minimize missed pickups and deliveries by streamlining appointment setting with more reliable scheduling that ensures dock appointments are up-to-date and accurate to eliminate the risk of overbooking and bottlenecks. It also offers real-time visibility into your schedules so you can anticipate and mitigate potential delays that could increase driver wait times for loads moving in or out.

2. Trailer Type Optimization

Paper packaging shipments often come in bulky or odd-shaped sizes. Some loads will cube out quickly, and others can max out weight on a trailer without filling up the space. Opendock considers load type, pallet count, etc. — during scheduling to ensure the right equipment for the most efficient loading and unloading for each shipment.

3. More Efficient Transportation and Logistics Overall

Opendock improves the efficiency of your operations by seamlessly integrating with your transportation management systems (TMS) and warehouse management systems (WMS) through its open API. Better communication with all the stakeholders and departments in your company and your carriers leads to better coordination and more efficient operations with on-time and on-budget deliveries.

4. Analytics and Reporting

Traditional ways of managing dock scheduling provide very little analytics and reporting, but Opendock provides actionable data and valuable insights. For example, an Insights dashboard provides detailed reports on dock utilization, appointment adherence, and other key metrics that will help identify areas for improvement. Its Carrier Scorecard allows you to track carrier performance, ensuring you only work with reliable partners you can trust.

5. Increased Competitiveness and Resource Utilization

Opendock helps maintain efficiency and cost-effectiveness within the shipping operation by digitizing manual processes that are often prone to human error. This speeds up decision-making with the added benefit of cost savings thanks to reduced driver dwell times and better optimization of your resources — your people, your time, and your equipment. Add that up, and most companies will quickly find themselves with a new competitive edge.

A Modern Shipping Dock

Many paper packaging companies run their dock operations the way it’s always been done because… that’s the way it’s always been done. Today, this line of thinking will lead to nothing but bottlenecks and frustration.

By simplifying scheduling and booking procedures and improving communication, Opendock can help you reduce delays, increase on-time deliveries, improve your dock utilization, lower dwell times, increase efficiency and cost savings, and help you create a more sustainable operation—everything you need to improve customer satisfaction and gain an edge in the industry.