Yard Management System: Powerful Features Enabled By Innovative Technologies

#Article
#Software Development
#Logistics
May 9, 2022 7 min read

Retailers appreciate velocity the most to satisfy the customers and gain more revenue. Companies can provide speedy delivery if they know where the inventory is in the yard. Customized or out-of-the-box yard management systems grant outstanding visibility in checking the inventory and storage.

If you are still using the “pen and paper” method for matching all the previous inventory checks—or are willing to eliminate the risks of people moving around the yard among the boxes, containers, and vehicles—it’s high time to think about an automated yard management system. Innovecs expertise in empowering the yard logistics with leading-edge software solutions can come in handy in this issue.

In accordance with “The State of Yard Management Industry Report 2022,” 92% of the respondents believe that an efficient yard management system is able to bring added value to a company’s business processes. That is a great reason to launch tech solutions for this stage of the supply chain.

MarketWatch.com reports in “The Dock and Yard Management System Market” report that the market size is projected to reach US $8589.6 million by 2028, from US $4101.3 million in 2021, at a CAGR of 10.9% during 2022-2028. That is the reason we decided to highlight the possibilities of yard management system technologies in the integrated supply chain tuning here in our blog.

What is YMS And Why Businesses Need It

Forbes mentions that proper yard, and especially fleet, management is a “golden standard” of any modern big or middle-sized company in order to stay competitive. They name the following key concerns identified by the top managers, which are driven by software YMS solutions:

  • drivers’ safety – 21%;
  • fuel efficiency – 19%;
  • local regulatory rules compliance – 18%;
  • on-time data management – 18%;
  • real-time supply chain visibility of the yard activities – 18%.

As is mentioned in the Aberdeen business study (“Safety, Operational Excellence and the Changing Expectations of Service Fleet”) there’s good news: yard management solutions are developed easily by a number of IT companies as Innovecs to address the above-mentioned issues and make your fleet and transportation activities cost-effective. It’s just enough to learn more about your business needs and outline the benefits you’re willing to gain via custom solutions implementation.

Yard management system

Everything that is happening in your company yard is a subject of optimization and management for better revenues: from the scheduling process and gate operations to the dock and fleet monitoring and auditing. Let’s dive deeper into what can be expected after a proper YMS launch.

Smooth Fleet Management As A Way To Cut The Costs

Mastering your fleet is the baseline to monitor your trucks, be aware of depreciation level and utilize AI-solutions for the best of your fleet’s long-lasting activity without repair and overspent fuel consumption.

Fleet telematics as a tool for trucks management and control provides you a clear vision of:

  • whether trucks are moving, idling, or parked;
  • actual and forecast arrival time;
  • how to move from maintenance to preventive monitoring.

The key issue of the YMS solution concerning fleet management is to monitor driver’s performance to predict service time, route, traffic, and appointed cancellations. That will lead to a higher level of customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and more profit for your business.

DHL stresses Telematics as a crucial point as technology to pick, arrange and utilize data gathered from the vehicles for more efficient use of the whole fleet.

Once you are still not ready to outsource the development of a custom fleet management software with telematics features, it’s possible to try just special fleet monitoring devices on Amazon to make sure it’s not only the benefit of the fleet auditing but vehicle safety as well.

Fleet Safety Monitoring

Modern AI-empowered sensors can go even further in meeting your business needs. To reduce the costs of truck usage, it’s worth monitoring driving style and speed restrictions to improve “behind-the-wheel” behavior to reduce the fleet management risks (road accidents, car idle time, vehicle breaks on delivery).

In 2021-2022, Reuters reported Amazon introduced a special Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF) for logistics and supply chain innovations. Among the solutions, fleet safety monitoring took high priority. They consider “safety to be the key factor of in-time, high-quality delivery provision.”

Key options, which YMS assists to monitor

Modern IT solutions such as telematics platforms, truck management software, and sensor devices to pick fleet data contribute to safety in terms of preventing distracted driving via streamlined communication with the drivers (e.g. assists in spotting mobile device usage or eating while driving to prevent accidents). Also, geofences-based tools can be used as an additional preventive measure to stop vehicles from moving without authorization.

Innovecs is ready to share our expertise in the development of yard space solutions, as well as the optimal planning of even limited areas at vehicle yards.

Focusing on AI and IoT technologies for safety (sensor-enabled fleet monitoring, drivers’ network efficient management) leads to maximum quality in goods delivery, higher profits, and the retainment of satisfied customers.

Boosted Fleet Performance

Knowing the status of your drivers in real time and spotting any distracted or not legitimate vehicle activity lead you to the boosted fleet performance as a profitable outcome.

FedEx reports about “better management of 482 vehicles data gathering” due to innovative solutions of YMS systems, and the implementation of an ETD (electronic trade documents) system for better yard monitoring. They noticed that the yard management system assists in tackling the challenges of 2022: workforce shortage as well as market volatility.

By tracking both drivers and fleet, you reduce costs, enhance end-user satisfaction and loyalty, and scale your business smoothly because once you developed automated YMS for one part of the business, it will operate at the same level for the next launched business parts.

Streamlined Yard Operation

Smartrak calculated that every vehicle spends 25% of operating time idling on average and it sounds really terrific. That is why it’s important to streamline the whole conglomerate of the yard activities under a clear vision of an overall picture of separate operations and their interconnections.

Fundamental Relation In Yard Operation

To address yard operations streamlining, you should remember any activities compliance with your business demands is a major concern. While choosing the most suitable YMS solution, it’s worth mapping all the parts of the business activities:

  • ELDs operations (electronic devices logging necessities: parking time, idling time, driver’s distraction or being out of geofence);
  • fuel consumption (delivery, fuel tax payments, consumption);
  • inspections, regulatory auditing, fleet risks management, scheduled preventive monitoring.

It’s obvious that managing separate stages of the yard activities will not grant you profitable outcomes. You can have a fuel sensors system or drivers’ idle hours data management, but if they are not united in the unified smoothly operating streamlined YMS system, it will not do its best for the business. We propose to learn more about what a really good YMS solution is.

What Comprises An Efficient Yard Management Solution

A really efficient yard management system should cover all the yard components and their operation.

YMS components

While developing custom YMS, four vectors of yard management improvement should be considered:

  • Planning and tracking
  • Yard inventory management and auditing
  • Real-time quick access to any information
  • Security and loss prevention

“Turn complexity into opportunity,” is a slogan on the Kourber website to describe proper yard management implementation for arranging an efficient digital supply chain.

In 2022, Gartner stated in the Report about YMS challenges and opportunities: “Often yard operations need for more automation and digitization, because manual labor caused numerous errors, created safety risks. So, such setbacks lead to new solutions demand on the market.”

What comprises really efficient YMS

A really good YMS solution should provide:

  • visibility (from a user-friendly interface to easily distracted necessary information);
  • quick responses;
  • the minimizing of operational assets (people, trucks, containers, pallets);
  • improved sustainability (optimizing fuel consumption or route planning);
  • well-managed driver turnaround time;
  • advantage of data exchange between all the existing WMS, and TMS systems involved in business processes;

These insights are the very answer to the question of why the YMS is needed. And for developing a product that performs as described above, contact us to learn more about tech possibilities for your business to better revenue.

Bottom Line: How Yard Management System Contributes To Your Business Growth And Wealth

To recap, it’s worth emphasizing that yard management is wider than just fleet ruling or docks optimization, it’s an overall software-based solution to comprise the whole yard data, process it, make it easily accessible and ready to be used for making yard operation decisions.

Once you gain proper yard telematics as well as yard operations management system your business will reach:

  • cost reduction;
  • drivers’ behavior risks decrease;
  • end-user boosted loyalty;
  • faster ROI because you can scale once developed YMS software for the business growing parts;
  • streamlined and unified cooperation and communication between all the parts of WMS in your company.

2022 proposes a wide range of YMS solutions, but whenever you choose a product, you consider the specific needs of the business.

FedEx, in its sustainability report, mentions an overall profile of the modern YMS system, stating it should “propose multiplying opportunities” as well as connect the parts of your yard “responsively and resourcefully.”

If reading this blog made you think about possible ways of improvements for yard operations, Innovecs can contribute high-quality tech expertise to the development of custom YMS solutions.

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