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Yard Management Solutions released a host of advanced yard automation tools designed to optimize gate and yard operations, automate bulk commodity operations and turn yard data into actionable insights.
For instance, YMS Autopilot is designed to optimize gate and yard operations with digitized enhancements.
Key takeaways:
- Automated spot assignment: When assets arrive at the facility, YMS instantly assigns a spot based on pre-set rules unique to each operation and proximity.
- Yard activity monitoring: YMS Autopilot constantly monitors the yard, scanning for delays, idle time, and underused assets. Notifications and alerts are sent to the appropriate personnel as soon as issues are detected. Real-time data enables facilities to make informed decisions about processing, asset use, and prioritization.
- Automatic move requests: When a dock door opens, the system automatically sends a move request to the nearest available driver using real-time GPS data. When a trailer is processed at the dock, a move request is automatically made to a driver to come and pick up that trailer from the dock door. This streamlines dock processes, reduces idle time, and keeps carriers updated without human intervention.
- Magic Dock: Magic Dock scans through each appointment for the day, available trailers in the yard, and pre-set dock door requirements automatically create dock sequencing schedules for each door based on customer rules.
- Automation setup wizard: YMS Autopilot includes an intuitive Automation Setup Wizard that allows teams to easily configure, manage, and adjust all automation rules in one centralized location. Users can define workflows for spot assignments, move requests, alerts, and dock scheduling without complex configuration or technical expertise. The wizard provides a step-by-step interface, making it simple to tailor automations to each facility’s unique processes while maintaining full visibility and control. As operations evolve, teams can quickly update rules to ensure continuous optimization without disrupting daily yard activities.
Another new release is an automated system for bulk commodity operations, designed to streamline complex bulk operations seeking to eliminate challenges associated with hopper management, bulk appointment booking, and visibility across the railyard.
Key takeaways:
- Master Load Plan: Without yard management software, customers rely on manual methods, which can lead to missing crucial rail pickup and return dates and overlooking weight overages. Master Load Plan helps track pickup, return, and cut-off dates, and enforces weight restrictions system-wide to eliminate costly errors.
- Appointment module: YMS Appointment Module allows customers to create and track multiple appointments simultaneously, porting information over to the gate module for expedited check-in.
- PIT module: YMS notifies hopper drivers with a text message as soon as a PIT spot becomes available and automatically makes a move request for an empty container to be brought in. Color coding ensures that the correct product is loaded into the right container, eliminating chances of error and confusion.
YardIQ consists of a suite of yard analysis tools designed to turn yard data into actionable insights, recommendations, and ROI.
Key takeaways:
- YardIQ goes beyond reporting by automatically surfacing key findings, trends, and anomalies across yard operations. It prioritizes issues by severity and confidence level, delivers clear, actionable recommendations, and quantifies the financial impact of inefficiencies, such as labor overstaffing, detention spend, and unrealized dock capacity, so teams know exactly where to focus.
- YardIQ provides a unified view of performance across facilities with an easy-to-understand health score and traffic-light system (good, caution, attention needed). It benchmarks key metrics like dwell time, moves per driver, compliance, door utilization, and error rates, making it simple to identify underperforming sites and prioritize improvement efforts across the network.
- YardIQ translates driver activity into measurable labor efficiency and cost impact. It tracks moves per driver, compliance rates, queue times, and deadhead percentages, then compares actual performance to target productivity levels. The platform identifies overstaffing, underutilized labor, and performance gaps across facilities, enabling organizations to optimize staffing and increase move execution rates.
- YardIQ evaluates dock door performance by measuring dwell times, process times, and door utilization. It detects bottlenecks, underperforming doors, and abnormal spikes in dwell time, while surfacing outlier trends. With built-in recommendations and quantified opportunity cost, teams can improve throughput, reduce delays, and maximize dock capacity.
- YardIQ tracks detention trends across facilities, including detention vs. prevented detention, load types, and carrier performance. It identifies high-risk locations, rising detention patterns, and gaps in prevention workflows. By quantifying total detention spend, duration, and avoidance opportunities, organizations can reduce fees and improve operational efficiency.
- YardIQ analyzes trailer activity and system events to uncover operational inaccuracies and workflow breakdowns. It highlights issues such as lost trailers, manual spot edits, yard check inconsistencies, and facility transfer errors, while tracking error rates and trends over time. This enables teams to improve data accuracy, reduce product loss, and strengthen yard execution.
- YardIQ evaluates yard inventory health by analyzing trailer aging, recency of updates, and inbound vs. outbound balance. It identifies risks such as aging inventory, missing driver information, and imbalanced flow, while providing recommendations to improve data quality, communication readiness, and overall yard fluidity.
