When FourKites acquired TrackX earlier this year, it announced a new product for yard management. That product, Dynamic Yard, is now available for companies that want to proactively manage all aspects of their supply chain, including facility movements.
Dynamic Yard is the combination of TrackX’s yard management solution with FourKites’ technologies, including its real-time visibility platform. The end result is a solution that provides visibility from the yard to the end customer, the company said.
“We are thrilled to be able to offer Dynamic Yard to facility managers across the globe,” said Priya Rajagopalan, FourKites chief product officer. “It is FourKites’ mission to shed light where the supply chain has historically been forced to do business in the dark. The latest testament to the power of our customer-driven innovation, Dynamic Yard extends the power of real-time freight visibility into new territory for the first time.”
TrackX developed yard, dock and gate control products. Combining those capabilities with FourKites’ visibility solutions to create Dynamic Yard means users can manage everything in a shipment’s journey — from appointment and dock scheduling to gate operations and spotter tasking. Once on the road, the shipment can be managed to include estimated time of arrival, accelerate gate-in and gate-out processes and to better manage a driver’s on-site time.
FourKites added that inventory optimization that leads to reduced dwell times and increased operating margins are other benefits.
TrackX’s yard management solutions are already used by many FourKites customers, including Tyson Foods and DHL. According to research from Gartner, shippers are in search of improved visibility and automation in yard operations.
“Often, the yard operations operate in a very manual and non-technology-driven way. The need for more automation and digitization caused by the recent disruptions and concerns around social distancing has created more visibility of the gaps that exist in many yard operations,” Gartner said.
GE Appliances had been using a yard management system, but said the system provides only limited benefit due to a lack of data.
“FourKites’ Dynamic Yard could become a game-changing solution for us,” said Belinda Biddle, customer experience manager of transportation at GE Appliances. “Our existing YMS is limited when it comes to understanding the real-time status of our freight. FourKites took the opportunity to work with us to understand our need to optimize operations based on tracking and predictive ETA data. Dynamic Yard and its integration with FourKites’ real-time visibility platform could be a real breakthrough that enables cost savings and significant gains in efficiency.”
Dynamic Yard is hardware-agnostic to provide seamless integration with a number of systems, including enterprise resource planning systems, transportation and warehouse management systems, electronic logging devices, GPS, and telematics systems.m