DCs apply sensors, wireless networks, and the Internet of Things to the warehouse yard, a traditionally low-tech node in the supply chain that’s getting new attention in a time of heightened operating restrictions.
Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
As the logistics industry adjusts to a new world marked by tight caps on drivers’ hours of service amid pandemic-fueled demand surges and operating restrictions, many companies are turning to technology that can help them cope with these challenges, leading to the rise of the “digital yard.”
With the hours-of-service (HOS) mandate restricting drivers’ road time, companies are looking for ways to boost efficiency in other parts of the supply chain, says Chris Wolfe, CEO of asset management solution provider PowerFleet Inc. With driving time at a premium, many businesses see the yard as a “chokepoint” where drivers can waste many of their allotted hours waiting in line for a DC dock door to open up, he adds.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, Wolfe says. DCs can gather data from the trucks in their yards by tapping into the sensors increasingly found on everything from truck cabs to trailers to drivers’ own smartphones as well as the increasingly sophisticated Internet of Things (IoT) networks that allow facilities to identify and track nearly every asset that rolls onto their property. They can then mine these rich veins of data to fine-tune dock and yard operations to avoid backups and delays.
DCs LOOK TO THE YARD TO CUT WASTE
The rise of the digital yard is accelerating as trading partners seek more-efficient operations. “This is the evolution of where things have to go based on … HOS. That’s where the next savings is in asset utilization,” Wolfe says.
In the new model of yard operations, companies can combine local sensor data with yard management system (YMS) and transportation management system (TMS) software platforms to squeeze inefficient practices out of the process—the kinds of practices that have led to the long lines of trucks waiting to load or unload that have become common in the coronavirus era. Instead, sensors monitoring variables like weight and motion can detect when a truck is ready to leave the DC and instantly alert warehouse managers.
Among other benefits, those precise metrics enable facilities to avoid backups by notifying suppliers to delay shipments or by warning incoming drivers that a dock door won’t be ready for a scheduled delivery. While the delay could still count against the drivers’ service hours, the advance notice might allow them to wait it out at a truck stop with amenities instead of sitting in a line of trucks outside a warehouse.
“How fast is a trailer getting loaded? If you find it’s not even half loaded, then you may as well slow a driver down and have him wait somewhere else. The worst thing you can do right now is have drivers waiting” in the yard, where they may be unable to maintain the recommended social distances, Wolfe says. “But if a driver knew when to arrive, he wouldn’t have to wait. Everything has to work like a well-oiled machine.”
That machine can be oiled by the vast streams of data that can be collected from a digital dock and yard management system, says Tim Kubly, business development manager for Rite-Hite Digital Solutions. “Customers want to know what’s happening with their equipment without standing there and looking at it the whole time. Now, with the Industrial Internet of Things, we can collect data and push it out to an intuitive dashboard,” Kubly said in a recent webinar, pointing to his firm’s Opti-Vu and Dok-Vu dashboards as examples.
“That means we can monitor detention time. A company might want to make sure it gets trailers off the dock within two hours. But the problem is that workers may not know how long a trailer has been there,” Kubly said. “Now, when a trailer backs up to the dock and the trailer lock is engaged, a timer starts.”
Depending on the type of dock equipment, the system could track sensor signals that detail every step in the inbound and outbound freight process. For example, Rite-Hite’s platform can track variables like trailer presence, door open, leveler down, forklift activity in trailer, leveler up, door closed, and trailer departure. DC managers can use those statistics to schedule the activities of drivers, warehouse workers, shipping and receiving staff, and yard jockeys, he said.
Another factor driving demand for digitized operations is the push for touchless operations during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to dock and yard management solution provider C3 Solutions. The company says its software products can reduce or eliminate paper transactions by using electronic documents instead of paper records on carrier/supplier web portals and for gate processes.
Yard management technology developer Pinc Solutions is taking a similar tack. Pinc says its Digital Yard solution is designed to automate gate activities, trailer movements, dock scheduling, yard operations, and more. The company’s Pinc Kiosk even supports a touchscreen multilanguage interface with a temporary radio-frequency identification (RFID)-tag dispenser that allows drivers to perform self-check-in and self-check-out.
YARD DATA FILLS IN VISIBILITY GAP
Supply chain visibility provider FourKites likewise had digital yard operations in mind when it announced in March that it had acquired three yard solution software platforms—Yard Management, Dock Management, and Gate Control—from TrackX Holdings Inc. All three of the newly acquired platforms collect data by building connections with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management system (WMS) software as well as with RFID and IoT sensors. By tapping into that data flow, FourKites says it can now extend real-time freight visibility into the warehouse yard.
“I think we’ve really nailed where freight is during transit, but that is only one piece of the puzzle,” FourKites Founder and CEO Matt Elenjickal says. “Goods are being held in the yard for some time, whether it’s at pickup or dropoff. What people really want to know is, ‘Where are my products?’—regardless of whether they’re in transit, in the yard, or in the warehouse.”
But achieving that kind of universal traceability may not be so easy. FourKites acknowledges that some trading partners like third-party logistics service providers (3PLs), suppliers, and retailers have been hesitant to share shipping data with each other, although he says that’s starting to change. “We have a lot of customers who ship to retailers or who manufacture consumer packaged goods. We facilitate the sharing of data, but some people weren’t buying in because of data privacy concerns,” Elenjickal says. “One manufacturer said, ‘We’d be happy to share our data if you can mask our purchase orders and carrier lanes.’ And we said ‘OK, we can do that!’ The industry wants to collaborate more.”
Given the current pressure to deliver swift, smooth performance amid tightening restrictions, Elenjickal and others believe warehouse operators have a lot to gain from opening up access to their supply chain data. And one of the payoffs could be a big jump in efficiency at the dock and yard interface, where freight moves from truck to DC and back again.
Warehouse automation orders declined by 3% in 2024, according to a February report from market research firm Interact Analysis. The company said the decline was due to economic, political, and market-specific challenges, including persistently high interest rates in many regions and the residual effects of an oversupply of warehouses built during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The research also found that increasing competition from Chinese vendors is expected to drive down prices and slow revenue growth over the report’s forecast period to 2030.
Global macro-economic factors such as high interest rates, political uncertainty around elections, and the Chinese real estate crisis have “significantly impacted sales cycles, slowing the pace of orders,” according to the report.
Despite the decline, analysts said growth is expected to pick up from 2025, which they said they anticipate will mark a year of slow recovery for the sector. Pre-pandemic growth levels are expected to return in 2026, with long-term expansion projected at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% between 2024 and 2030.
The analysis also found two market segments that are bucking the trend: durable manufacturing and food & beverage industries continued to spend on automation during the downturn. Warehouse automation revenues in food & beverage, in particular, were bolstered by cold-chain automation, as well as by large-scale projects from consumer-packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers. The sectors registered the highest growth in warehouse automation revenues between 2022 and 2024, with increases of 11% (durable manufacturing) and 10% (food & beverage), according to the research.
The logistics tech provider Körber Supply Chain Software continues to position itself in a fast-changing business landscape, aligning itself today with the digital transformation consulting firm Zero100.
Körber Supply Chain Software—to be formally known as Infios beginning in March—has plenty of funding to make those strategic changes, since the company is a joint venture between its parent company, the German business technology powerhouse Körber AG and KKR, the California-based merger and acquisition specialist.
London-based Zero100 calls itself a membership-based intelligence company connecting, informing, and inspiring the world’s supply chain leaders to accelerate progress on digital supply chain transformation. In January the company gained new financial backing through a “growth investment” from the private equity firm Levine Leichtman Capital Partners. According to Zero100, that new financing will accelerate its tech, data, research, and talent capabilities, further strengthen its team, and enable further product and service innovation on behalf of the company’s customers.
Infios says it is joining that community to access Zero100’s data-driven research insights and advisory, and to integrate innovative sustainability practices and digital tools into its adaptable solutions. Infios’s catalog of technology includes order management, warehousing and fulfillment, and transportation management.
By harnessing advanced technologies such as AI and data analytics and providing businesses with the right level of flexibility and control to evolve and adapt solutions to their needs, Infios says it can help its customers optimize their entire supply chain ecosystem and create a more optimistic outlook.
The Swedish supply chain software company Kodiak Hub is expanding into the U.S. market, backed by a $6 million venture capital boost for its supplier relationship management (SRM) platform.
The Stockholm-based company says its move could help U.S. companies build resilient, sustainable supply chains amid growing pressure from regulatory changes, emerging tariffs, and increasing demands for supply chain transparency.
According to the company, its platform gives procurement teams a 360-degree view of supplier risk, resiliency, and performance, helping them to make smarter decisions faster. Kodiak Hub says its artificial intelligence (AI) based tech has helped users to reduce supplier onboarding times by 80%, improve supplier engagement by 90%, achieve 7-10% cost savings on total spend, and save approximately 10 hours per week by automating certain SRM tasks.
The Swedish venture capital firm Oxx had a similar message when it announced in November that it would back Kodiak Hub with new funding. Oxx says that Kodiak Hub is a better tool for chief procurement officers (CPOs) and strategic sourcing managers than existing software platforms like Excel sheets, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or Procure-to-Pay suites.
“As demand for transparency and fair-trade practices grows, organizations must strengthen their supply chains to protect their reputation, profitability, and long-term trust,” Malin Schmidt, founder & CEO of Kodiak Hub, said in a release. “By embedding AI-driven insights directly into procurement workflows, our platform helps procurement teams anticipate these risks and unlock major opportunities for growth.”
Here's our monthly roundup of some of the charitable works and donations by companies in the material handling and logistics space.
For the sixth consecutive year, dedicated contract carriage and freight management services provider Transervice Logistics Inc. collected books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines for Book Fairies, a nonprofit book donation organization in the New York Tri-State area. Transervice employees broke their own in-house record last year by donating 13 boxes of print and video assets to children in under-resourced communities on Long Island and the five boroughs of New York City.
Logistics real estate investment and development firm Dermody Properties has recognized eight community organizations in markets where it operates with its 2024 Annual Thanksgiving Capstone awards. The organizations, which included food banks and disaster relief agencies, received a combined $85,000 in awards ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.
Prime Inc. truck driver Dee Sova has donated $5,000 to Harmony House, an organization that provides shelter and support services to domestic violence survivors in Springfield, Missouri. The donation follows Sova's selection as the 2024 recipient of the Trucking Cares Foundation's John Lex Premier Achievement Award, which was accompanied by a $5,000 check to be given in her name to a charity of her choice.
Employees of dedicated contract carrier Lily Transportation donated dog food and supplies to a local animal shelter at a holiday event held at the company's Fort Worth, Texas, location. The event, which benefited City of Saginaw (Texas) Animal Services, was coordinated by "Lily Paws," a dedicated committee within Lily Transportation that focuses on improving the lives of shelter dogs nationwide.
Freight transportation conglomerate Averitt has continued its support of military service members by participating in the "10,000 for the Troops" card collection program organized by radio station New Country 96.3 KSCS in Dallas/Fort Worth. In 2024, Averitt associates collected and shipped more than 18,000 holiday cards to troops overseas. Contributions included cards from 17 different Averitt facilities, primarily in Texas, along with 4,000 cards from the company's corporate office in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Electric vehicle (EV) sales have seen slow and steady growth, as the vehicles continue to gain converts among consumers and delivery fleet operators alike. But a consistent frustration for drivers has been pulling up to a charging station only to find that the charger has been intentionally broken or disabled.
To address that threat, the EV charging solution provider ChargePoint has launched two products to combat charger vandalism.
The first is a cut-resistant charging cable that's designed to deter theft. The cable, which incorporates what the manufacturer calls "novel cut-resistant materials," is substantially more difficult for would-be vandals to cut but is still flexible enough for drivers to maneuver comfortably, the California firm said. ChargePoint intends to make its cut-resistant cables available for all of its commercial and fleet charging stations, and, starting in the middle of the year, will license the cable design to other charging station manufacturers as part of an industrywide effort to combat cable theft and vandalism.
The second product, ChargePoint Protect, is an alarm system that detects charging cable tampering in real time and literally sounds the alarm using the charger's existing speakers, screens, and lighting system. It also sends SMS or email messages to ChargePoint customers notifying them that the system's alarm has been triggered.
ChargePoint says it expects these two new solutions, when combined, will benefit charging station owners by reducing station repair costs associated with vandalism and EV drivers by ensuring they can trust charging stations to work when and where they need them.