Wednesday, December 19, 2007
HOW TO PROJECT THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF DOCKS
There are three ways to determine the number of truck or rail shipping and receiving docks.
(I) Manual Calculation Method
There are few factors that included in calculating and determine the number of truck docks:
1) Number of daily truck arrives to company
2) Frequency of deliveries
3) Time required to unload and load the goods to the container
4) Number of man powers
5) Availability of equipment
6) Safety rules One of the examples to determine number of docks is the number of trucks per year multiplied by the hours it takes to load or unload a truck divided by the work hours of a year. At least one dock space will be added when designing the number of docks for the lift truck travel to the ground.
(II) Manual Dock Simulation
This method projects the number of docks that are required for the various types of vehicles that deliver or ship product to your facility. Data required for a manual truck dock simulation consists of the following:
(1) for an average day, the number of trucks that arrive at your facility, type of load (floor-stack or unitized), and rear of truck height
(2) the time of day that each truck arrived at your facility
(3) the number of hours that each truck was at the dock position (including spot and departure time)
(4) the number of standard and special docks
(5) your company’s anticipated growth rate.
A dock simulation shows you how to improve your dock assignment or delivery schedule for better dock utilization and determines the number of docks that are required for your warehouse.
(III) Computer simulation of dock operations
Using this method, the same information is needed for example truck and shipping activity, productivity and volume. All the data will need to converted into computer system and the computer program will determine each dock utilization and other dock area design information.
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2:37 PM