Supplier Management
Appointment Scheduling - More Than Just Slot Booking
Robert Ibisch
Modern time slot management is much more than selecting a free slot and hoping that the truck will actually arrive at the site at that time. In the modern world, punctuality and the associated adherence to booked time slots are becoming increasingly relevant. After all, it is not uncommon for the smooth operation of entire production lines to depend on this, in addition to capacity and resource planning.
Ensuring punctuality does not just start when the truck sets off. Even the time slot booking itself can be designed as simple as possible for the forwarder and at the same time provide all relevant information so that subsequent processes can be mapped in the best possible way.
Time slot booking: What information is relevant?
In addition to flexible slot length and capacity calculation, modern time slot management tools such as myleo / dsc also offer the possibility of ensuring that no booking is lost or changed at short notice by means of flexible cut-off times. After all, in order to ensure that the planning of the trucks to be dispatched runs smoothly, this must be completed at a certain point in time. Cut-off times regulate precisely this point in time.
It is easy to store a blanket value here, but it is not really goal-oriented. This is because in day-to-day operations, flexible regulations are encountered again and again, which make a blanket setting impossible. With the help of myleo / dsc you can easily reflect these peculiarities. There are no limits to the imagination for possible cut-off times. Here are some examples:
- Your house forwarder is allowed to work on the time slot up to 30 minutes before the time slot.
- You load on Saturdays, but since only loading is staffed here, the time slots must be booked by 2 p.m. on Friday.
- In the coming week, three forklift drivers are on vacation, so the time slots have to be up earlier to ensure scheduling.
- Different shift models mean that scheduling must be completed at different times.
In combination with the flexible rules in time slot management , this leads to a noticeably better coordinated and more target-oriented appointment scheduling, which enables the best possible synchronization of yard processes.
Further options with myleo / dsc
However, improvement of planning does not have to end at this point. With the myleo / dsc process platform, it is easy to also create a yard record in the course of time slot booking, which can subsequently lead to automated dispatch of the truck in the yard.
In addition, by connecting the Real-Time Transportation Visibility services of myleo / dsc , it helps to incorporate real-time data. This makes it very easy to see whether a truck arrives at the site on time and keeps to its time slot. For example, the slot of a truck that arrives too late can be used by another vehicle that may be too early. In this way, no time is lost and it is still comprehensible which bonus/penalty, if any, arises for the respective carrier.
In this way, the myleo / dsc enables a holistic communication approach, which allows an optimal processing of the daily loading and unloading.
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