AMSTERDAM — 12 July, 2023 — FourKites, a Supply Chain Visibility provider, today unveiled extensive enhancements to its automated Appointment Manager solution. Now, with live status updates from customers’ networks, full configurability and end-to-end automation, Appointment Manager is the industry’s first no-touch scheduling tool for warehouses, plants and distribution centers. Shippers, carriers and drivers benefit from significant time savings, smoother operations, reduced detention fees and a lower carbon footprint.
With these latest enhancements, shippers can specify the desired delivery date for both full truckload and less-than-truckload shipments, and Appointment Manager will automatically select optimal appointment times, securely share appointment data across partner networks, and allow teams to proactively reschedule appointments based on FourKites’ industry-leading machine learning-based predictive ETAs.
Specifically, the updates to Appointment Manager include:
- AutoBooker, a new premium feature that integrates with customers’ load planning platforms to intelligently select the best appointment time based on the planned delivery date, enabling completely automated scheduling and carrier notifications based on real-time data. AutoBooker is highly configurable to shippers’ business rules, and accommodates the creation of calendars by commodity, carrier and more. AutoBooker is estimated to save up to 8 minutes per scheduled appointment.
- LTL Scheduling. Appointment Manager now allows the scheduling of less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments, including the ability to split appointment times into smaller blocks to accommodate shorter unloading times, schedule appointment slots with shipments spread among multiple trailers, and schedule outbound shipments with multiple order numbers in a single trailer. This capability improves facility throughput for industries who are frequent users of LTL shipping, especially LSP, CPG and retail supply chains.
- Comprehensive Reporting. Shippers can now drill into granular details regarding carrier appointment compliance, facility metrics, capacity utilisation, arrival success and more to better inform carrier selection and drive continuous operational improvements.
FourKites’ Appointment Manager enhancements are being introduced on the heels of the 1 millionth appointment booked with the solution, scheduled by longtime facilities user, Trane Technologies from its site in Tyler, Texas. The first appointment solution to integrate with every major transportation management and enterprise resource planning system, hundreds of the world’s leading brands now rely on Appointment Manager to slash manual processes and improve their bottom line. Over the last 12 months, FourKites has seen triple-digit growth in the number of facilities managed with Dynamic Yard® and Appointment Manager, as well as the number of appointments managed in Appointment Manager.
“FourKites’ Appointment Manager, with integrated real-time visibility, has increased our yard efficiency, improved truck turn times and enabled us to provide superior customer service,” explains Tom France, Vice President of Distribution, Logistics and Transportation for Trane Technologies, scheduler of the 1 millionth appointment.
“Our new Appointment Manager capabilities are a harbinger of what we’ve long been building toward: a new era in automated, interconnected and collaborative global supply chains, built on a foundation of real-time supply chain visibility,” said FourKites founder and CEO Mathew Elenjickal. “Efficient facility management is critical to the logistics industry right now, and our Appointment Manager solution — in combination with Dynamic Yard and our industry-leading predictive ETAs — are enabling never-before-seen levels of productivity, agility and efficiency.”