project44 rolls out new Yard Solutions offering

Late last week, Chicago-based supply chain visibility services provider project44 rolled out a new yard management offering.

Entitled, Yard Solutions, project44 described it as a comprehensive set of dock, yard, and asset management capabilities focused on improving efficiency and automating yard operations from a single platform, through its three primary offerings: Slot Booking, Yard Visibility, and Yard Management.

The company said that these three primary offerings provide various benefits for facility and operations managers, including:

• enabling self-service for the carrier arrival and departure processes;
• improving operational efficiency within the facility by configuring tasks and automating the trailer load and unload process with loading dock management;
• streamlining yard operations by orchestrating tasks and collaboration of dock workers and drivers through spotter and live driver management;
• enhance yard forecasting and planning processes using predictive ETAs with real-time updates on trailer status ensuring dock doors and facility personnel are fully utilized; and
• utilizing enriched data to run reports and advanced analytics across single or multiple yards to understand how many appointments came per day, quantity of trailers arrived, drivers incurring wait times and more

“Moving goods efficiently and with discrete visibility through yards can be a challenge,” said Kiruba Raja, General Manager of Yard Solutions at project44, in a statement. “Our innovative Yard Solutions enable shippers and logistics service providers to reduce time in overall gate management workflows, lower costs spent on yard equipment and optimize processes in the warehouse, such as load prioritization and dock door assignments.”

A project44 spokesperson told LM that these solutions will provide the company’s customers with even greater end-to-end real-time tracking and visibility of their goods.

“Yard Solutions helps enable our customers to action on different things within their yard with accurate and real-time data,” he said. “We want to supply customers with highest quality data and insights that help them respond to disruptions before they occur. Our innovative Yard Solutions enable shippers and logistics service providers to reduce time in overall gate management workflows, improve yard efficiency, lower costs spent on yard equipment, streamline the arrival and departure process with Slot Booking and optimize processes in the warehouse, such as load prioritization and dock door assignments.”  

The spokesperson added that Yard Solutions is p44’s first offering that allows shippers and logistics service provides to manage the operations of their yard or facilities.  

As for the main competitive advantages of Yard Solutions, from a project44 perspective, the spokesperson said that traditional yard solutions are often hampered by legacy technology and difficult to fully integrate with the broader supply chain ecosystem. 

“project44's solution and API-first architecture provides real-time location tracking and uses IoT automation to improve yard inefficiencies and drive business processes,” she said. “[We] also takes IoT tracking further than our competition. We can understand temperature, status and understand what commodities and SKUs are in which trailers. Our infrastructure is built on Google Cloud Platform and if customers use SAP, we have a native integration with them for a visibility platform.”  

And the spokesperson said that Yard Solutions integrates directly with project44's first, middle and last mile offerings to unify disjointed supply chain processes into a single view.

“These solutions will provide our customers with even greater end-to-end real-time tracking of their goods, including asset management, inventory management, manage returnable assets, manage pallet exchanges, not the management of containers and trailers,” she said. “Our Predictive ETAs provide real-time updates when shipments are expected to depart or arrive at a facility, which can then help to forecast future loads and yard planning.”