Behind the Shelves: Dock Scheduling’s Role in Retail Logistics

Most consumers take the work that goes into getting products onto store shelves for granted. As logistics professionals know, plenty can go wrong at any point in the retail supply chain — no matter how well it’s designed. Things just happen sometimes, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t do more to shore up any weak links they have.

A make-or-break point in the logistics network of many retailers is managing the flow of shipments in or out of their facilities. Problems and inefficiencies on the shipping dock are common causes of delivery delays and disruptions to production. As a solution, many of today’s leading retailers are looking to technology to prevent the problems most docks deal with every day.

A strong dock scheduling process reduces administrative labor hours, reduces dwell times, and makes it easier for warehouses to plan their operations. Keep reading to learn if your shipping operations can benefit from dock scheduling in a similar way.

Common Challenges of Retail Logistics

Most retailers’ logistics operations deal with various challenges,these are three of the most common we hear from our customers.

1. Trucks showing up unplanned or first come first serve that do not match up with the warehouse loading and unloading resources. This results in lines of trucks outside the building, frustrated carriers, and significant detention fees.  The delays impact customer orders, production schedules, or the next shipment for your carriers.
   
   
2. Teams lack insight and visibility into the status of a shipment. When is it scheduled?  What's the ETA?  When did it arrive? These are the most common questions from warehouse teams and other departments like sales, operations, and customer support.  When team members don't have an easy way to find this information, they waste more time looking for it and calling warehouse teams to provide an update. This causes the warehouse teams to fall further behind on their most important productivity metrics.
   
   
3. Getting the right systems to run your business is only half the battle.  The next steps are making them work within your process and more importantly for the systems to work together.  Tools like WMS, TMS, YMS, ERPs, and your dock scheduling system create much more value when they interact to make life easier for your warehouse teams.  Eliminating duplicate entries, siloed data, or confusion on which system should be used.  Opendock offers an API with documentation, engineering support, and 3rd party partners to help customers build integrations that work for them.

What Is Digital Dock Scheduling?

The solution to these challenges is dock scheduling software, which can be a hub for managing the flow of inbound and outbound deliveries at your warehouse. It replaces the traditional and more chaotic approaches of phone calls and emails to schedule dock appointments or manually handling trucks on a first-come, first-served basis with a structured and centralized system. With centralized, user-friendly software in place, carriers can book appointments online for specific timeslots on a self-serve basis. This eliminates the uncertainty of arrival times and ensures an efficient allocation of your dock resources.

Dock scheduling software, such as Opendock, also provides real-time visibility, allowing you to see when trucks are scheduled, have arrived, and are completed with corresponding time stamps. Your warehouse and carriers can access a live view of your dock schedules. This allows for better communication, faster adjustments to accommodate changes, and improved coordination throughout the logistics process. Email communication includes appointment confirmations, arrival notifications, and updates, eliminating the need for check calls or emails.

Another critical feature of dock scheduling software is the collection of data on how you use your dock — your turnaround time and driver dwell time. This data is invaluable. It helps you identify bottlenecks, optimize your scheduling strategies, validate detention (or refute it), and ultimately make better data-driven decisions to improve dock efficiency.

How Does Opendock Help Retail Logistics?

By implementing digital dock scheduling with Opendock, retail warehouses can improve several specific parts of their operations, including better loading and unloading processes, more efficient omnichannel fulfillment, and better network management when integrated with a WMS and TMS.

Better Loading and Unloading Processes

In terms of improved loading and unloading, Opendock will eliminate the uncertainty of arrival times and potentially long dwell times by scheduling deliveries upfront. This way, trucks can be promptly loaded or unloaded when they arrive. Pre-planned appointments help operations teams allocate labor more effectively because of visibility into inbound/outbound shipments. Better planning helps reduce overall labor costs and more specifically overtime labor. Opendock is accessible by all staff on mobile devices, computers, and even has TV mode to display it on bigger screens, allowing your warehouse staff and drivers can stay in touch, eliminating confusion and improving communication.

Omnichannel Retail Fulfillment

Retailers often support multiple facility types including large distribution centers, smaller regional fulfillment centers, and retail stores. Each type with unique volumes, demands, and configurations.  

Most companies focus on dock appointment scheduling for their distribution centers.  However, many large retailers are using their store locations more like distribution centers with customers buying online and picking up in store.  At the store level, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage lean labor models and manage incoming inventory from DCs, direct store deliveries, or 3rd party vendor drop shipments. They lack visibility into pickups and deliveries and don't have labor when the trucks arrive.  This results in long wait times for the truck and pulling labor off the retail sales floor that is helping customers.

Easy-to-use software tools, like Opendock, scale up with large distribution centers to manage thousands of monthly appointments and scale down to support stores with a few shipments per week.

On Schedule - From Dock-Door to Store Shelves

Retail logistics operations deal with daily challenges, whether with delays to inbound shipments, trucks not showing up on time for a pickup, or something entirely unforeseen. Dock scheduling software like Opendock is a powerful solution to prevent most problems before they happen by coordinating the flow of goods and ensuring all parts of your supply chain work together seamlessly.

With better control and increased visibility, you’ll not only be in a better position to deal with the complexities of your logistics but also deliver an exceptional omnichannel experience for your customers. All while reducing costs, improving supplier relationships, and putting you in a better position to react to surprises with agility.