Yard Management

The use of RTLS to track and manage trailers, containers, and vehicles in outdoor facility yards. Enables automated check-in, optimized parking assignments, quick trailer location, and dwell time monitoring. Particularly valuable for facilities with large trailer yards. Often uses GPS or LoRa for outdoor coverage.

Yard management encompasses the processes, systems, and practices for controlling vehicle and trailer movements, parking, and operations within facility perimeters and logistics yards. Turnaround time tracking - measuring complete cycle from truck arrival through loading/unloading to departure, identifying bottlenecks in yard operations, and benchmarking performance across time periods or facilities. Third-party logistics (3PL) operations managing customer trailers and equipment across shared yard spaces. Technologies for yard RTLS differ from indoor systems: GPS provides outdoor coverage where satellite visibility available but inadequate accuracy (3-10 meters) for tight parking and lacks coverage in covered areas. UWB extends from indoor facilities into adjacent yard areas providing high accuracy (30-50 cm) but limited range requires dense infrastructure. Yard management KPIs enhanced by RTLS include: average dwell time (hours trailers remain in yard, target typically 2-24 hours depending on operation), dock door utilization (percentage of time doors productive, targets 60-80%), turnaround time (minutes from arrival to departure, targets 45-120 minutes), yard occupancy (percentage of parking spaces used, targets 70-85% balancing utilization with flexibility), and wait time (minutes trucks wait for available doors or assets, targets under 30 minutes). Quantified benefits from yard management RTLS include: 20-40% reduction in truck wait time through optimized dock assignment and visibility, 15-30% improvement in dock door utilization from better scheduling and trailer management, 25-50% reduction in equipment search time (yard tractors quickly located for task assignment), 10-20% yard space efficiency improvement through optimized trailer placement, and 30-60% reduction in detention and demurrage costs from proactive dwell time management. GNSS is the primary technology for large open yards (coverage without infrastructure investment, 3-10 m accuracy sufficient for locating trailers in parking rows), while BLE provides cost-effective coverage in semi-covered areas (loading canopies, staging areas). Hybrid GNSS+BLE deployments are common: GNSS covers open yard areas, BLE covers transition zones, and UWB extends into dock doors and adjacent indoor areas, providing continuous tracking throughout the complete inbound/outbound process.