Susan Lacefield has been working for supply chain publications since 1999. Before joining DC VELOCITY, she was an associate editor for Supply Chain Management Review and wrote for Logistics Management magazine. She holds a master's degree in English.
If yours is a typical shipping operation, shipments probably aren't the only thing flowing out your dock doors each day. Chances are, money is too, in the form of air you've paid to heat or cool.
The causes of the problem aren't hard to understand. With doors opening and closing all day long, loading docks represent a prime escape route for heated and cooled air. And those doors aren't the only area of vulnerability. Think of all the gaps between the dock door and the door of the truck that's parked there for loading or unloading. Those cracks and gaps may seem insignificant, but they're actually a prime source of energy loss. If you added up all those gaps for 10 dock doors, you'd have the equivalent of a 6- by 6-foot hole in your distribution center's wall, says Steve Sprunger, vice president of sales and marketing for dock equipment maker 4Front Engineered Solutions.
In the past, it was easy enough to dismiss the problem as an unavoidable part of dock operations. But times are changing. Today, rising utility costs and societal and corporate pressure to be green are driving companies to take a look at how they can conserve energy at the loading dock.
So what can you do to tighten up your operations? Here are some tips.
Mind the gaps
When it comes to saving energy at the dock, most experts will tell you that shelters and seals are the first line of defense. Dock doors typically stand open for hours on end while trucks are loaded and unloaded, creating enormous potential for energy loss if the opening isn't sealed. Shelters, which cover and surround the top and sides of a trailer, and seals, which work by pressing up against the truck, are designed to prevent air from escaping. If your operation doesn't already have these devices in place, investing in them would be a good place to start.
But it's not enough to simply install these devices; you have to keep them in good working order. Seals and shelters can lose effectiveness over time—whether through normal wear and tear or damage. That's why it's a good idea to regularly inspect seals and shelters and replace old and damaged units.
It's worth noting that the cause of sealing failures isn't always obvious. Sometimes, the fault lies not with the seal, but with the door itself. As Sprunger explains, it's not unusual for a door to get hit and end up with a kink in it. Although the DC often is able to get the door working again, there may be residual damage—like panels that have been knocked out of alignment, creating a gap of a quarter inch or more and compromising the seal. To avoid this, Sprunger recommends installing dock doors that are specifically designed to withstand abuse, like those with impactable bottom panels.
Draft dodging
Although seals and shelters can go a long way toward stemming energy loss, they're not always enough. Even with these devices in place, dock doors can still be drafty. If that's true of your operation, there are a couple of other possibilities to investigate.
One is the so-called "hinge gap." Most over-the-road trailers have doors that hinge open as opposed to rolling up. When the truck backs into the dock, the dock shelter then seals to the inside face of the trailer door, as opposed to the trailer's outside wall. The result is a vertical gap between the outside wall of the door and the outside wall of the trailer, where air can rush in and out, says Walt Swietlik of dock equipment maker Rite-Hite.
Specialized seals designed to close off the trailer hinge gap during loading and unloading can help plug this type of leak. Rite-Hite also offers a dock shelter that has hooks that extend over the hinge, sealing it off from top to bottom.
Another place to check for leaks is the dock leveler, the device that bridges the gap between the truck or trailer door and the loading dock. Oftentimes, gapping occurs at the corners on either side of the dock leveler. As Swietlik puts it, as you look down on the leveler, there are two squares of white space on either side of it.
These gaps can be a significant source of energy loss, according to the experts. That's because unlike the gapping that occurs around dock doors and trailers, these gaps don't disappear once the dock door is closed. "Gaps around the leveler are a 24-hour-a-day concern since the front of the leveler is exposed to the exterior of the building," says Sprunger.
A number of dock equipment companies offer products that mount to the outside of the building and to the dock leveler to seal up those gaps.
Leakage can also occur underneath the dock leveler. Traditional dock levelers are recessed into a pit. If there's any kind of gapping between the leveler and the concrete pit, heated and cooled air can escape through the opening. Investing in an under-leveler seal can help plug this gap.
Open door policy?
When it comes to dock-related energy loss, the problem isn't always with the equipment. Sometimes, it's with the people. Seals won't do much good if dock attendants inadvertently leave doors open or fail to follow the proper procedure for opening dock doors (thus leaving doors open longer than necessary).
If you suspect operator error is a factor in your operation, "interlocking" or "sequencing" the dock operation can help. The use of interlocking equipment—devices that automatically engage when another piece of equipment is set in motion—removes the risk of operator oversight. Mike Earle of inflatable seal maker Pentalift says his company offers seals that can be interlocked with the mechanism that opens overhead doors so that once a door is opened, the seal starts inflating against the truck. This eliminates the chance that the operator or dock attendant will forget to engage the seal.
Sequencing a dock operation is another way to limit the amount of time doors are kept open. With sequencing, a control system or panel automatically sets the order of the dock door opening process. So, for example, a dock attendant must lock the trailer before raising the dock door and then engaging the dock leveler. The equipment will not turn on until the previous step has been completed.
In addition to interlocking and sequencing, there's always the software route. A number of companies offer dock management software that monitors loading dock equipment to make sure a dock door isn't left open. The software notifies the user when a door has been breached and then acknowledges any corrective action taken, says Sprunger of 4Front.
Watts going down?
Opportunities to save energy at the loading dock aren't limited to plugging air leaks, to be sure. Switching to more efficient—that is, lower wattage—dock lighting can also go a long way toward cutting utility bills.
Motor carrier Old Dominion Freight Line, for example, installed T5 lights at its freight handling facilities along with motion sensors that turn on the lights when motion is detected and ambient sensors that dim or raise lights depending on how much natural light is available. It also installed skylights to increase the amount of natural light in the loading dock area.
The result has been a noticeable drop in Old Dominion's utility bills. The carrier has seen a payback in anywhere from one to 12 months, depending on the number of lighting fixtures in the facility, says Howard Cornelison, the company's director of purchasing and real estate.
Another way to take a bite out of utility costs is to install high-volume, low-speed fans in the dock vestibule. In cold weather, these fans force hot air down from the ceiling; in hot weather, they promote air circulation and have a slight cooling effect.
Energy audit
If that seems like a lot of information to digest, help is available. Many dock equipment companies, including Rite-Hite and 4Front, offer free energy audits to identify areas of vulnerability and recommend solutions.
The return on investment for this type of equipment is typically pretty fast, according to the vendors. So once you've decided on a solution, it's usually fairly easy to get upper management to sign off on it, they say.
"In our analysis, we find the payback in Northern climates [is] in many cases a year or less," says Swietlik of Rite-Hite. "Considering that this equipment can run anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500," he adds, "that's a fair amount of energy saved."
Four Seasons keeps cool in face of rising energy costs
Utility rate increases may be a fact of business life, but the hikes Ephrata, Pa.-based Four Seasons Produce was looking at four years ago were in a category of their own. With Pennsylvania's electricity price cap set to expire on Jan. 1, 2010, the produce wholesaler had been running some numbers to see what kind of hit it would take. The findings came as something of a shock: Four Seasons learned its utility bills would rise anywhere from 20 to 40 percent. That was all it took for the company to launch a wholesale energy conservation effort aimed at generating savings roughly equivalent to the increase—somewhere between 20 and 30 percent.
One of the first areas to come under scrutiny was the company's bustling distribution center, a three-shift operation that operates six and a half days a week and handles more than a million cases a month. "We started by looking at areas of the facility where we knew we could reduce our energy use," says Randy Groff, Four Seasons' director of facilities and energy. "The building envelope, including the dock area, was one place that we knew we could generate some savings."
That assumption proved correct. A review of the operation revealed significant energy leakage at the dock's 35 doors—a serious concern for a refrigerated operation that requires its docks to be kept at a cool 40 degrees F. Part of the problem was that the original dock shelters were designed for tractor-trailer barn-style doors. When the company had to load or unload anything smaller, the result was a significant gap between the shelter and the vehicle.
To plug the leaks, the company invested in dock shelters and seals. In 2009, Four Seasons installed Rite-Hite's Eliminator-GapMaster dock shelters at all of its loading dock doors to seal the gap at the trailer door hinge. It also put in Rite-Hite's Pit Master under-leveler seals, which eliminate the gap between the leveler and the pit wall.
"It's now a lot easier to keep the ice on the broccoli," says Nelson Longenecker, Four Seasons' VP of business innovation.
How did the company do against its target? Quite well, it turns out. Its overall conservation initiative, which also included a lighting retrofit and the installation of a DC energy management system, produced savings of almost exactly 25 percent. "We hit our goal of having a smaller electrical bill this year than we did four years ago," says Longenecker.
Sometimes, all you need is the right partner to solve your logistics problems.
In 2021, global paint supplier Sherwin Williams faced driver and hazardous material (hazmat) capacity constraints: There simply weren’t enough hazmat drivers available in its fleet to maintain the company’s 90% fleet utilization rate expectations for key partner store deliveries while also meeting growing demand for service. Those challenges threatened to become even more acute in the future, as a competing paint supply company began to scale back its operations in the Pacific Northwest, leaving Sherwin Williams with an opportunity to fill the gap.
The paint supplier needed a logistics partner that could help it overcome the shortage of hazmat drivers while also helping to manage its West Coast trailer pools, out-of-region runs, and ad-hoc freight. It also needed a solution that would meet quarterly and annual fleet budgets.
SCALING UP
Enter ITS Logistics, a third-party logistics service provider (3PL) that offers supply chain solutions for drayage, network transportation, distribution, and fulfillment across North America. ITS proposed a combined owned-asset and asset-light approach that would provide Sherwin Williams with the equivalent of 21 additional drivers. The 3PL would leverage its carrier network to overcome the shortage of hazmat capacity while also certifying its own drivers via a three-month process. Further, ITS would help manage Sherwin Williams’ trailer pools and coordinate carriers, providing the paint company with a single point of contact for transportation.
The project would address cost concerns as well: “ITS Logistics aligned its solution with Sherwin Williams’ budgetary cadence and offered a quarterly business review to align on price structure, adding a level of transparency and trust to the relationship,” according to a case study the partners released earlier this year.
The companies soon sealed the deal and launched the program.
Not long after that, Sherwin Williams began to feel the effects of the anticipated challenges in the Pacific Northwest—but the company was prepared. When the competing paint supply company shuttered its operations, causing demand for Sherwin Williams’ products to spike, ITS injected a blend of owned trailers and carrier power to alleviate equipment challenges, cover all locations and regions, and help the paint supplier scale to meet volume.
CLOSING THE GAPS
The project has helped Sherwin Williams rapidly scale its capacity, meet fleet utilization requirements, manage trailer pools, coordinate carriers, and flex to meet spikes in regional demand.
And the results speak for themselves.
“ITS integrating themselves into our fleet was instrumental in helping increase our outbound volume by 18.4 million pounds [year over year] in the last seven months of 2023,” said Ted Taxon, regional transportation manager at Sherwin Williams, in the case study. “This equated to approximately 460 truckloads of extra freight, a large portion of which ITS [handled] on an ad-hoc basis with no operational constraints or quality issues.”
The partnership also helped Sherwin Williams maintain a 90% fleet utilization rate with big box retailers—an increase from less than 70% prior to the partnership’s launch.
Robots are revolutionizing factories, warehouses, and distribution centers (DCs) around the world, thanks largely to heavy investments in the technology between 2019 and 2021. And although investment has slowed since then, the long-term outlook calls for steady growth over the next four years. According to data from research and consulting firm Interact Analysis, revenues from shipments of industrial robots are forecast to grow nearly 4% per year, on average, between 2024 and 2028 (see Exhibit 1).
EXHIBIT 1: Market forecast for industrial robots - revenuesInteract Analysis
Material handling is among the top applications for all those robots, accounting for one-third of overall robot market revenues in 2023, according to the research. That puts warehouses and DCs on the cutting edge of robotic innovation, with projects that are helping companies reduce costs, optimize labor, and improve productivity throughout their facilities. Here’s a look at two recent projects that demonstrate the kinds of gains companies have achieved by investing in robotic equipment.
FASTER, MORE ACCURATE CYCLE COUNTS
When leaders at MSI Surfaces wanted to get a better handle on their vast inventory of flooring, countertops, tile, and hardscape materials, they turned to warehouse inventory drone provider Corvus Robotics. The seven-year-old company offers a warehouse drone system, called Corvus One, that can be installed and deployed quickly—in what MSI leaders describe as a “plug and play” process. Corvus Robotics’ drones are fully autonomous—they require no external infrastructure, such as beacons or stickers for positioning and navigation, and no human operators. Essentially, all you need is the drone and a landing pad, and you’re in business.
The drones use computer vision and generative AI (artificial intelligence) to “understand” their environment, flying autonomously in both very narrow aisles—passageways as narrow as 50 inches—and in very wide aisles. The Corvus One system relies on obstacle detection to operate safely in warehouses and uses barcode scanning technology to count inventory; the advanced system can read any barcode symbol in any orientation placed anywhere on the front of a carton or pallet.
The system was the perfect answer to the inventory challenges MSI was facing. Its annual physical inventory counts required two to four dedicated warehouse associates, who would manually scan inventory to determine the amount of stock on hand. The process was both time-consuming and error-prone, and often led to inaccuracies. And it created a chain reaction of issues and problems. Fulfillment speed is one example: Lost or misplaced inventory would delay customer deliveries, resulting in dissatisfaction, returns, and unmet expectations. Productivity was also an issue: Workers were often pulled from fulfillment tasks to locate material, slowing overall operations.
MSI Surfaces began using the Corvus One system in 2021, deploying a small number of drones for daily inventory counts at its 300,000-square-foot distribution center (DC) in Orange, California. It quickly scaled up, adding more drones in Orange and expanding the system to three other DCs: in Houston; Savannah, Georgia; and Edison, New Jersey. The company plans to add more drones to the existing sites and expand the system to some of its smaller DCs as well, according to Corvus Robotics spokesperson Andrew Burer.
Those expansion plans are based on solid results: MSI’s inventory accuracy was about 80% prior to the drone implementation, but it quickly jumped to the high 90s—ultimately reaching 99%—after the company initiated the daily drone counts, according to Burer.
“We actually had an incident early on where one of the forklift drivers ran into the landing pad, rendering it inoperable for about a week while the Corvus team fixed it,” Burer recalls. “When we restarted the system, we noticed MSI’s inventory accuracy had dropped down to the 80s. But after flights resumed, accuracy quickly improved back to near perfect.” He adds that such collisions are rare as Corvus mounts landing pads high off the floor to avoid impacts but that accidents can still happen.
Overall, the system has helped speed warehouse operations in two key ways: First, the accuracy improvement means that associates no longer waste time searching for missing material in the warehouse. And second, the associates who used to conduct the physical inventory counts have been reallocated to picking and replenishment—creating a more efficient, and optimized, workforce.
A SAFER, MORE EFFICIENT WAREHOUSE
Robot maker Boston Dynamics is well-known for its Stretch and Spot industrial robots, both of which are at work in warehouses and DCs around the world. Earlier this year, Stretch made its debut in Europe, teaming up with Spot at a fulfillment center run by German retail company Otto Group. The deployment marks the first time Stretch and Spot are being used together—in a partnership designed to improve Otto Group’s warehousing operations by increasing efficiency and making warehouse work safer and more attractive to workers.
The partnership is part of a two-year project in which Boston Dynamics will deploy dozens of its warehouse robots in Otto Group’s European DCs. The first location is a fulfillment site operated by Hermes, the company’s parcel delivery subsidiary, in Haldensleben, Germany—a facility that handles as many as 40,000 cartons of goods on peak days.
At the site, Stretch—which is a mobile case-handling robot—autonomously unloads ocean containers and trailers, using its advanced perception system to pick and place boxes onto a telescoping conveyor inside the container or trailer. Spot—a quadruped robot—helps with predictive maintenance by collecting thermal data and performing acoustic and visual detection tasks throughout the facility to reduce unplanned downtime and energy costs. One of Spot’s jobs is to detect air leaks in the facility’s warehouse automation systems; future duties may include conveyor vibration detection, according to leaders at Otto Group.
Both Stretch and Spot will help the Haldensleben facility run more efficiently, especially during fall peak season when volume increases and work intensifies. The addition of Stretch addresses safety and comfort issues as well: Trailer unloading—a process that entails repeatedly lifting and moving heavy boxes inside a trailer, which can be dark, dirty, cold, and/or hot, depending on the weather—tends to be unappealing to workers. Along with reducing the amount of labor required, automating these tasks will have the added benefit for European facilities of helping them comply with EU (European Union) regulations limiting the amount of time workers can spend in those conditions.
Essentially, the robots are making life easier on the warehouse floor and for the company at large.
“Stretch is going to have a ton of benefits for customers here in the EU,” Andrew Brueckner, of Boston Dynamics, said in a recent case study on the project.
The trucking industry faces a range of challenges these days, particularly when it comes to load planning—a resource-intensive task that often results in suboptimal decisions, unnecessary empty miles, late deliveries, and inefficient asset utilization. What’s more, delays in decision-making due to a lack of real-time insights can hinder operational efficiency, making cost management a constant struggle.
Truckload carrier Paper Transport Inc. (PTI) experienced this firsthand when the company sought to expand its over the-road (OTR), intermodal, and brokerage offerings to include dedicated fleet services for high-volume shippers—adding a layer of complexity to the business. The additional personnel required for such a move would be extremely costly, leading PTI to investigate technology solutions that could help close the gap.
Enter Freight Science and its intelligent decision-recommendation and automation platform.
PTI implemented Freight Science’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven load planning optimization solution earlier this year, giving the carrier a high-tech advantage as it launched the new service.
“As PTI tried to diversify … we found that we needed a technological solution that would allow us to process [information] faster,” explains Jared Stedl, chief commercial officer for PTI, emphasizing the high volume of outbound shipments and unique freight characteristics of its targeted dedicated-fleet customers.
The Freight Science platform allowed PTI to apply its signature high-quality service to those needs, all while handling the daily challenges of managing drivers and navigating route disruptions.
STREAMLINING PROCESSES
Dedicated fleets face challenges that evolve from day to day and minute to minute, including truck breakdowns, drivers calling in sick, and rescheduled appointment times. PTI needed a tool that allowed for a real-time view of the fleet, ultimately enabling its team to adjust truck and driver allocation to meet those challenges.
The Freight Science solution filled the bill. The platform uses advanced analytics and algorithms to give carriers better visibility into operations while automating the decision-making process. By combining streaming data, a carrier’s transportation management system (TMS), machine learning, and decision science, the solution allows carriers to deploy their fleets more efficiently while accurately forecasting future needs, according to Freight Science.
In PTI’s case, Freight Science’s software integrates with the carrier’s TMS, real-time electronic logging device (ELD) data, and other external data, feeding an AI model that generates an optimized load plan for the planner.
“We’re an integrated data analytics company for trucking companies,” explains Matt Foster, Freight Science’s president and CEO. “We’re talking about AI.”
The benefits of the real-time data are difficult to overstate.
“We’ve been able to execute in the toughest of situations because we’ve got real, live data on how long each event is actually going to take and a system to aid and even automate the decision-making process,” says Chad Borley, PTI’s operations manager. “From what traffic patterns we are battling in the morning and evening with rush hour and things like that, to the impact of additional miles to a route, or even location-specific dwell times, it’s been a huge differentiator for us.”
REALIZING RESULTS
A case in point: the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. PTI was scheduled to go live with a new dedicated account in the area just days after the collapse, which would mean rerouting and the potential for longer transit times. Instead of recalculating based on assumptions or latent data, PTI was able to reroute freight based on real-time information and analytics to give the customer timely updates.
“With the bridge going out, that changed our ability to make as many turns a day as the customer would expect,” Stedl explains. “But one of the things Freight Science could do [was to] quickly [assess] how much of an impact that traffic would have [and] what the turns [would] be based on what’s happening on the ground.
“So we were able to go back to the customer and readjust expectations in a real way that made sense, using data. Now expectations can be reset¾we’re not asking for forgiveness when there’s no reason for it.”
The system’s advanced algorithms make load planning more cost-effective and scalable as well. The platform allows PTI to monitor trucks, trailers, and driver hours in real time, recommending additional loads with remaining driver hours that would otherwise be wasted.
And they’re doing it all with much less. Stedl says tasks that used to require five people and hours of work can now be accomplished by one person in mere minutes, improving productivity and profitability while reducing labor and operational costs.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Aptean said the move will add new capabilities to its warehouse management and supply chain management offerings for manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and 3PLs. Aptean currently provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), transportation management systems (TMS), and product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms.
Founded in 1980 and headquartered in Durham, U.K., Indigo Software provides software designed for mid-market organizations, giving users real-time visibility and management from the initial receipt of stock all the way through to final dispatch of the finished product. That enables organizations to optimize an array of warehouse operations including receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping, the firm says.
Specific sectors served by Indigo Software include the food and beverage, fashion and apparel, fast moving consumer goods, automotive, manufacturing, 3PL, chemicals, and wholesale / distribution verticals.
Schneider says its FreightPower platform now offers owner-operators significantly more access to Schneider’s range of freight options. That can help drivers to generate revenue and strengthen their business through: increased access to freight, high drop and hook rates of over 95% of loads, and a trip planning feature that calculates road miles.
“Collaborating with owner-operators is an important component in the success of our business and the reliable service we can provide customers, which is why the network has grown tremendously in the last 25 years,” Schneider Senior Vice President and General Manager of Truckload and Mexico John Bozec said in a release. "We want to invest in tools that support owner-operators in running and growing their businesses. With Schneider FreightPower, they gain access to better load management, increasing their productivity and revenue potential.”