The database warehouses the daily transactional information for later reuse in evaluating dock requirements and utilization, as well as, internal off-line storage requirements. This information is very valuable in developing strategies for dock and internal storage requirements at the plant.

The Proplanner MHD generates a trailer loading report to be sent (by another system) to vendors. This report would specify:

• what parts are to be loaded on each trailer,
• what order the parts are to be loaded
• which docks that these materials are to be delivered to
• what times (both arrival and departure) the parts will be at each dock.

Features

• Determines the number of parts per trailer, the quantities of each part on a trailer, and the order in which these parts are loaded into the trailer.
• Determines dock utilization (i.e. which docks are over-utilized and which are under-utilized)
• Determines schedule of deliveries per dock.
• Determines dock/trailer unload policy (i.e. quick unload to staging area or pull from trailer as needed)
• Determines dock priorities per trailer (i.e. based upon the materials being received on the trailer and their line delivery locations, which dock results in minimum material flow)
• Determines an efficient way to input, output, store and analyze this information in combination with other internal logistics information, such as: containers, returnables, load times, unload times, handling methods, internal storage, part usage locations, etc.

Benefits

• Minimizes the number of trailer deliveries to the plant (i.e. fill trailers as full as possible)
• Minimizes the storage of sequenced material in the plant (i.e. attempt to pull parts from trailer to the line without using off-line storage)
• Minimizes the storage of non-sequenced material in the plant (i.e. provide a method by which more parts can be received as needed instead of stored within the plant. In other words, increase the holding costs to minimize the order quantities)
• Maximizes the usage of the docks (i.e. increase the number of parts delivered per dock hour, for docks that are highest in demand)