At PathGuide we’re constantly talking with our customers and working on new ways to help them get the most out of their Latitude WMS deployments. One of the things they’ve been consistently requesting is more control over inbound transportation scheduling and metrics. How long does it take to unload deliveries? Are vendors coming in late, on time, or early? Are they being forced to idle for extended periods waiting for bays to open up? And are some of them more prone to delivering damaged inventory? Most warehouses and DCs schedule deliveries using an Excel spreadsheet or a whiteboard, or they just “wing it” and hope that a dock door will be free when they need one. But we thought we could help them do better.
So, we’re very happy to announce that a powerful new Inbound Transportation Management (ITM) module will be available in April. This module will help streamline deliveries and give warehouse managers much more control over the delivery process. Using an intuitive web-based dashboard, the new ITM module makes it easy to assign specific times and bays for deliveries and ensure that the right equipment and manpower is ready for unloading (e.g. pallet loaded vs. floor loaded). Once the shipment arrives, employees can check the trucks in and out and attach notes to each delivery, all from the web browser or an RF terminal.
The ITM module will also keep track of a variety of metrics automatically, such as how long individual employees spend unloading a certain kind of delivery. This is a great tool for warehouse managers who need to forecast and assign labor each day. Having a pre-arranged appointment also means that trucks won’t arrive at the same time and cause a bottleneck.
If a truck arrives outside of its scheduled 20-minute arrival window, then it will be flagged as ‘late’ or ‘early’ and warehouse employees can enter additional notes if the products arrive damaged in any way. This insight gives managers useful data to help identify and flag problem vendors and negotiate with those vendors from a stronger position.
One of our customers, Jensen Distribution Services, has already been using the module in beta, and the final version will be made available to other customers soon. We’re proud of the unique features that this brings to the WMS industry and we hope that it will help many of our customers streamline their inbound transportation processes.