Speeding Up and Streamlining E-commerce Operations

Laser-focused on shipping times, accuracy, and reliability, today’s e-tailers need tools that can help them speed up the supply chain while staying out in front of their competitors. With Amazon recently dropping its Prime delivery windows to a single day, for example, the pressure is now on to meet—and even beat—that timeframe, or risk giving up business to this and other e-tailing giants.

With low national unemployment rates preventing companies from simply “throwing more labor” at the problem, more of these firms are turning to technology for help. In this Q&A, Kelley’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Loading Dock Products, John Carroll, discusses the current distribution environment for e-commerce companies and shows how they can use master control panels to streamline their operations, speed up the supply chain, and improve workplace safety.

Q: What challenges are today’s e-tailers facing in this high-pressure environment?

A:  Companies want to squeeze more productivity out of the same warehouse footprint. Both speed to the docks and velocity through the docks are becoming premiums, so they need equipment that provides the highest uptime while also handling the extra velocity in a safe manner. These realities are driving more companies to invest in powered equipment, safety equipment, and unified controls. In fact, we’re seeing a higher percentage of these types of investments over the last year versus anything we’ve witnessed in the past.

Q: What are high-volume distributors doing to accommodate the increasing demands of e-commerce?

A: The growth in e-commerce is driving most of the new construction of warehouses and DCs across the nation right now. In fact, hardly a day goes by that we don’t see announcements involving large e-tailers and retailers opening new facilities. That’s what going on in the marketplace right now, so that’s where most of the equipment is being allocated to. Concurrently, we’re also seeing existing facilities being upgraded to meet today’s e-commerce standards.

Q: How does safety factor into the equation?

A: Anytime you’re dealing with greater throughputs, there’s going to be opportunity for accidents and incidents to occur. Those problems can happen anywhere in the warehouse, but loading dock workers are particularly vulnerable. In fact, approximately 25% of all reported warehouse injuries occur on the loading dock, and for each accident, there are hundreds of near misses. This is just one reason why more companies are investing in vehicle restraints. We’re also seeing more fall protection devices being used at the loading dock, and a higher premium being placed on environmental fields at the dock (i.e., dock seals and shelters). The latter are meant to deal with e-commerce’s extremely low patience for moisture levels, with an emphasis being placed on ensuring that products being shipped don’t get wet. This has driven the movement toward more environmental sealing and controlling at the dock, which also tends to enhance safety.

Q: What other equipment are these e-commerce companies using to get their facilities up to speed with customer expectations?

A: Right now we’re seeing a lot more powered loading dock equipment (as opposed to mechanical) being installed and used. We’re also seeing a lot more vehicle restraints sold in conjunction with docks and unified controls. That’s where the HMI Digital Master Control Panel comes in. Our company actually pioneered the concept of putting all of the equipment at the dock into a single master control panel decades ago. And while controllers and components have evolved and morphed over the years, the overall functionality and the way users interact with those control panels hasn’t really changed over the last 25+ years. That’s where our new HMI Master Control Panel really takes a generational leap forward.

Q: In what ways does the new control panel outpace what the marketplace has traditionally offered?

A: It features a human machine interface or “HMI,” which in essence is just a touchscreen that offers a lot of functionality that traditional “push button” control panels lack. First of all, the actual operation of the dock equipment becomes completely intuitive because the only thing that shows up on the screen is the next step that the user should take in operating the equipment. It won’t let you operate it out of sequence, which drives improvements in safety, efficiency, and speed. Push button control panels work well, but they’re just not as intuitive.

Q: Can you explain what that “intuition” looks like in the e-commerce shipping environment?

A: To put it simply, the worker walks up and knows exactly which button to push and when. Traditional panels typically only work in a certain sequence, but there may be some “misses” as the user tries to figure out which button to push first. To help, we’ve always incorporated a lot of text on the face of the panel, which, presumably, the operator would read and use to go through the sequence of events to get the dock equipment placed in the trailer (i.e., secure the trailer restraint, get the dock leveler into the trailer, open the door, etc.). With the HMI Digital Master Control Panel, we’ve eliminated that text—a feature that speeds up new-user training because it’s very simple. It walks them through the steps as they perform the tasks. And because there’s no text to read, there are no language barriers to work through. Dock workers are productive as soon as they come onboard.

Q: How does the HMI Digital Master Control Panel ultimately help centralize warehouse and DC management?

A: With our 4Sight Connect product (to be released mid-July 2019), users have dashboards that enable “live looks” across multiple docks and/or facilities right from their mobile phones or tablets. So, the manager who oversees 50 docks across a large physical area can open a screen on any dock individually, see the status of all the equipment, and know immediately whether the restraint is engaged, a door is open, or the leveler is deployed. Once it’s collected, that data can be transmitted to a cloud software platform (via a Bluetooth mesh network) for further analyzing, and to use for generating reports or sharing with others. It gives supervisors and managers a cockpit to go to—and to work from—across their entire operations.

Visit the Kelley website to learn how HM Digital Master Control Panels are helping e-tailers streamline their operations, speed up the supply chain, and improve workplace safety.