Yard Management Systems (YMS) Update: Optimize your yard, optimize your business

Let’s face it, the warehouse yard has always been considered something of a “black hole” when it comes to visibility, data-sharing and coordination. It’s a place where yard jockeys use tractor-like vehicles to move trailers around, often relying on the “clipboard method” to manage and report on their activities.

And while the global pandemic—and the ensuing increases in online orders plus capacity constraints and labor shortages—forced companies to adopt more streamlined and touch-free yard management tools, demand for those systems has since leveled off as supply chains normalized.

Still, Simon Tunstall, senior research director in the logistics and customer fulfillment team at Gartner., says he’s been fielding “quite a few inquiries” for yard management systems (YMS) this year. These systems track trailer locations, manage appointments, streamline processes and reduce dwell times. Available as part of larger software suites or as standalone solutions (what Gartner calls “specialist systems”), YMS helps companies transform their yards from disorganized hubs and into well-oiled machines.

Broad range of applications

Whether a company needs a YMS or not depends on a few factors. Tunstall says simpler operations that have one facility and minimum requirements can often get away with using software that offers basic dock appointment scheduling capabilities.

Other companies can get the functionalities they need from the YMS that comes with their broader enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution (or other software suite), but some need more capabilities. For the latter scenario, a specialist solution (aka, “best
of breed”) is often the better bet.

“There are still many yards out there that are using manual processes and may not need very extensive yard management capabilities,” says Tunstall, “but would still benefit from a YMS.”

He points to two different scenarios that would warrant a specialist YMS: for the warehouse that has two or more yard jockeys handling each shift; or for the operation that has multiple sites and wants to use one solution to “see what’s going on” at those locations. For many companies, the activity happening at those “locations”—or in some cases, what’s happening at a single warehouse or DC—takes place in a vacuum.

Isolated and disconnected from what’s happening in the rest of the facility (or, as trailers move out of the yard and onto the road), the average yard remains ripe for a technological overhaul.

“The yard is often an island all its own,” says Amarendra Phadke, CTO, North American consumer products and retail engineering practice at Capgemini, “and a place where companies still face issues understanding where trailers are and where they need to be at any given point.”

One of the biggest impediments of yard visibility is the many different disconnected or manual systems that companies rely on to run this part of their supply chains. There’s a lot of paperwork to process, drivers to schedule and idle time to minimize. Most of these functions can benefit from automation and data-driven decision making, but not all companies understand the value of applying advanced technologies in their yards.

This oversight can become a major problem when a reefer battery dies while out in an untracked location in the yard and all of its contents perish as a result. Put simply, you can have the best WMS and TMS systems available on the market, but they won’t help if entire loads are damaged or lost while under the control of a supervisor that relies on clipboards for gathering and sharing information.

Ripe opportunity to chase

The current warehouse labor shortage is another factor that’s driving more companies to invest in their current vendors’ YMS systems or one that’s being offered by a best-of-breed, standalone provider. Not only are companies dealing with high labor churn, they’re also expected to provide modern, digital tools—not clipboards—that employees can use to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

“We see more companies focused on ensuring that they’re assessing the operators’ needs and driving simpler user experiences,” says Phadke. “That way, even if there is a churn from a labor perspective, those companies can better absorb, handle and manage that turnover.”

He’s also seeing a bigger emphasis being placed on enterprise end-to-end visibility, with the yard being one of several components that has to be a part of those conversations and technology investments. “There’s a focus on automation and what goes on inside your four walls,” Phadke says, “with what happens between your network, warehouse and enterprise still being a ripe opportunity to chase.”

What’s next for YMS?

Efficiency is paramount in the logistics world, yet many companies continue to use clipboard and handwritten notes to manage their yards. The good news is that YMS is often more affordable than WMS, TMS or other supply chain management applications.

The software also starts to deliver benefits pretty quickly, according to Tunstall, who tells companies to assess their current tech stacks before layering a new YMS on top of it. For example, if your current WMS vendor offers a basic YMS as part of the package, that option may be a good fit for your operation. If you need more functionalities and capabilities than that, Tunstall says, explore some of the specialist solutions available on the market.

From a futuristic viewpoint, Tunstall expects to see artificial intelligence (AI) playing a larger role in yard management. “We’re seeing increasing interest in both AI-enabled vision systems and RFID in the yard management space,” he explains. “Going forward, AI-enabled vision systems will go beyond experimentation, based on the real use cases that we’re starting to see in that area.”

Tunstall expects interest in YMS to continue, albeit at a slower pace than a few years ago, when there was an “urgent need” to put a system in place to manage visiting drivers. At the time, many companies rolled out visiting kiosk capabilities that enabled touch-free and streamlined admission to the yard.

Today, the focus is on making the yard more efficient, minimizing dwell time and gaining better visibility over what’s happening out in the yard. “These are all things logisticians should be focused on anyway,” Tunstall concludes, “but a YMS can help in these areas, whether that system comes from an existing vendor or a specialist.”