Problem

Warehouses may have to deal with Drivers arriving at the Facility without a previously scheduled appointment. And with that, problems with allocating this unplanned appointment into the warehouse schedule may arise:

• Where should they create the appointment if there are no available slots on the day? (No availability)?
• How can they track down appointments that were allocated last minute (or unplanned) so they can use the data to force carriers to start scheduling appointments correctly?
• What is the best way to manage an appointment that was not planned for?
  
  

Standard Opendock Process for Work-in Docks

1. Create a Work-in Dock hidden from Carriers to be managed internally by the warehouse - This dock will receive the appointments that haven't been scheduled and therefore need to be set up to receive all possible Load Types. This Dock also needs to have Overbooking enabled so as to allow for creating appointments from carriers that Arrived at the same/close time
   • Dock Name: Work-in; Add all Load Types; Enable Overbooking; Hide it from Carriers
2. Reorder the Docks so that your work-in Dock is visible to create more efficiency on allocating and managing the unplanned appts - you might want to have it as the first or last Dock on the List, and consequently, on the grid.
3. Create a Tag to identify unplanned appointments in case they are moved to other docks - this facilitates the tracking and reporting of unplanned appointments
   • Tag Name: Unplanned
4. When Creating Unplanned Appointments remember to use the Tag to identify them as "Unplanned" so they can be traced, and Move their Status directly to Carrier Arrived OR Edit the Arrival time to match the actual Arrival time of the Carrier - this helps for having accurate data on Dwell Times
   
   

Note: Unplanned appointments can be managed on the Work-in Dock or be allocated to different Docks if/when there is availability. 

All new Load Types must be also added to the Work-in Dock so that it continues to support all Appointment settings.

Watch this 5-minute walkthrough on how to set up a Work-in Dock: