Automate Shipment Tracking With a New Approach for RAIN RFID at the Dock Door

Things move quickly in a global marketplace. With shipments coming from around the world, distribution centers and ports need to operate at optimal efficiency to ensure goods get where they’re meant to go. Manual tracking of pallet contents and inbound/outbound shipments can no longer keep pace with the speed of business. Businesses track work in process (WIP) to make sure the right goods are available at the right time to optimize assembly processes. Warehouses must be organized to allow for finding and counting inventory. Assembling shipments requires verification of the correct item SKUs, quantity, and destination matching inbound and outbound goods. Inaccuracies at transition points, like dock doors, where a handoff of ownership and control in the supply chain take place, can lead to increased costs and frustration.

Incorrect shipments occur even in the best supply chains—whether sending the incorrect items or quantity, or loading to the wrong trailer destined for the wrong location. Supply chain operations face many challenges including:

1. Rate of Returns: According to the National Retail Federation annual return study 20151, late delivery of items and an incorrect item delivered accounted for $67B worldwide.

2. Return & Outbound Costs: These costs can be five times2 the cost of the original shipment due to return processing and expedition fees.

3. Double Pick/Ship Time: According to US Department of Transportation statistics3 average pick and shipment cost is around $5.00/pallet; and it takes about 10 minutes to process a pallet shipment. Every erroneous pallet loaded in a trailer doubles this cost and time to the warehouse operation.

4. Product Damages: A Journal of Applied Packaging4 research study points out that 39% of pallet loads are prone to damages by material handling equipment during the loading process. Unnecessary loading/unloading increases the probability of product damages.

5. Need for Dock Automation: Studies published in Modern Material Handling Journal suggest the primary problem in warehouse operations is that the pick and process order for an outbound trailer is significantly faster than loading the same order on a trailer. Slow loading is keeping operations from moving at their peak pace.

6. Warehouse Transformation: The space automation between the trailer and storage (dock door), is key in warehouse modernization transformation5. The biggest issues are related to speed of shipping verification (confirming the correct items on the truck) and time of loading.

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