November 28, 2023 • 46 mins
In a new episode of Everything is Logistics, hosts Blythe Brumleve sits down with two yard management technology experts, Colin Mansfield and Severiano Carnera, to discuss how technology can help streamline operations, prevent waste, and improve the driver experience. They share how Yard Management Solutions and process automation can drive major efficiencies and cost savings for companies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Blythe Brumleve (00:05):
Welcome into another episode of Everything Is
Logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We were proudly presented bySPI Logistics and I'm your host,
Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a special show foryou today.
I feel like I say that beforeevery episode, but we've been
having some really greatconversations on the pod as of
late, and today is a first forthe pod where we have two guests
that are appearing on the show,and so we got Sev and we got
(00:30):
Colin, both from Yard ManagementSolutions, and we're going to
be talking about just what thehell you're missing out on.
When it comes to YMS technology, I have a very, admittedly,
very like in introductory levelknowledge, so hopefully you guys
don't mind my fifth gradersstyle questions when it comes to
this.
(00:50):
So welcome into the show.
First of all.
Colin Mansfield (00:52):
Hey, thank you so much, Blythe.
It's great to be on here.
I've been a sort of distantadmirer of your podcast for a
little while and seen you onTwitter and everything, so it's
pretty cool to be on here.
Blythe Brumleve (01:04):
I mean, yeah, obviously you got the hat on the
.
Please advise hats.
So, you're part of the ganggang.
You know that's been developingon social media, which is great
to see.
You know the freight communitystart to come together.
Let's start with you.
Know sort of job roles, seve,I'll start with you.
What is sort of your role?
Where are you, you know,calling in from?
(01:25):
Give us sort of a lay of theland for you.
Severiano Carnera (01:28):
Sure, sure.
So thanks for having us.
But yeah, first of all I'm fromthe Dallas Fort Worth area, so
things are super exciting herein Dallas right now, especially
with the Rangers about to winthe World Series knock on wood.
But yeah, so I live in theDallas Fort Worth area.
My role here with YMS is, firstof all, I support the sales
staff from a solution standpoint.
(01:48):
So my background involves over10 years of experience in the
YMS space, meaning I've workedwith a lot of YMS products.
So I support them from astandpoint of being that trusted
advisor, that person that wantsto help that customer find
solutions to their use cases, totheir pain points.
And then my second role here isreally in charge of the product
(02:10):
, making sure that the productneeds to be where it needs to be
from a standpoint of ourcustomers, making sure that
we're competitive against ourother competitive landscape as
well too.
And then making sure that someof the things that I see that
need upgrading, fixing thingsthat will get us up to even par
with our competitors or evenbeyond.
That is part of my role as welltoo.
(02:31):
So so far I've loved my rolehere and I love working with
Colin and the rest of the team.
Blythe Brumleve (02:36):
Awesome.
I appreciate that insightbecause I definitely want to get
into a little bit of thehistory of YMS technology and
where it's come from and wherewe're going.
But before we get to that,colin, give us a sense of your
role, where you're calling usfrom all that good stuff.
Colin Mansfield (02:52):
Absolutely.
Yeah, my name is ColinMansfield.
I am in Southern California,east of LA, kind of out by the
desert Beaumont specifically.
So I always joke because a lotof our companies up in Michigan,
when it starts getting cold inCalifornia, people really start
giving me a hard time.
Like that's not cold, man, itgoes.
It dips below 60.
I gotta put the heavy jacket on.
(03:15):
My background is not logistics.
I've been working for YMS forfour years.
My title is company VP.
Prior to this I was actually inthe United States Army working
at Air Missile Defense as alieutenant and then as a captain
.
My wife and I had our first babyand I decided, hey, I don't
want to be deployed all the time, maybe time for a change, sort
(03:35):
of looking for otheropportunities that were out
there and landed at yardmanagement solutions.
What's interesting to me aboutlogistics is I had zero interest
prior to joining this company.
To me it seemed very dull andas I started learning more and
more, I learned that there'sreally always something new to
(03:55):
discover.
And there's always somethingnew to learn.
You can peel back the onion andjust keep peeling, keep peeling
, keep peeling and, as I'm sureyou can attest to, there's
always something new.
So for me, I developed thislove of logistics and supply
chain and freight and kind ofall things logistics and
couldn't be more thrilled to behere.
So I'm very excited for thisjob and where the future of
(04:18):
freight is going.
Blythe Brumleve (04:20):
Yeah, I think logistics as a whole like for
the overwhelming majority ofpeople, once you joined into it,
it just gets its fingernails inyou and then it just doesn't
let you go.
I want to talk about just why.
Because you guys have a greatbrand name, yard management
solutions, which is also theacronym that most people use for
the technology as well.
(04:41):
So great SEO play on that.
Colin Mansfield (04:42):
That's exactly it.
Yes, it's wonderful.
It can be a little confusing.
People will be like, oh, I'veused your system before like a
YMS and I'm like, oh well, yeah,maybe we are the YMS.
Blythe Brumleve (04:55):
It's almost like there's a restaurant in New
York.
The title is called Tie FoodNear Me, and so they took
advantage of local SEO to try toget people who are searching
for tie food.
So they just named the entirerestaurant Tie Food Near Me.
So I love it.
It's a chess level thinkingwhen everybody else is playing
checkers, but for folks who youknow Seve, I'll go to you first.
(05:19):
What is the history of YMStechnology?
Was it just paper and pen thatslowly evolved into technology?
Give us a little bit of aglimpse from the historical
perspective.
Severiano Carnera (05:32):
Sure, sure.
So you're exactly right.
You know a lot of organizationsstill to this day are still
working off paper and pencilactivities.
So, whether it being going outto the yard, for example, and
doing a yard check to identifywhat inventory they have in the
yard at any given point in time,they're doing that manual
process where they're walkingaround the yard writing down
(05:53):
what they have in the yard.
After they've completed a taskwhich may take a couple of hours
, go back inside and turn thatinto a spreadsheet where that
can be shared with everyonewithin the organization.
The challenge is with some ofthose things, though, is that as
soon as you've written it down,it's no longer of any use up to
you, because the yard changesdynamically throughout the day,
throughout a couple of hours,depending on how large the
(06:14):
facility is, and then you throw,you know, additional
circumstances like, for example,if you have refrigerated units
out in the yard.
Refrigerated, we call reefersin the industry.
Those units have to bemaintained as well too.
From a standpoint ofunderstanding.
Do they have enough fuel insidethat refrigerator unit to keep
running?
Are the temperatures at thecorrect temperature settings?
(06:36):
Is that temperature settingstill staying at what it should
be?
So there's a lot of intricaciesthat can be involved with those
types of things.
So as a result of that,companies came up with the idea
of you know what?
Let's try and digitize thisentire process so you know
whether it be the arrival of atrader at the gate.
Let's get that importantinformation about that unit
(06:57):
coming into the facility andthen capture anything like, for
example, maybe an inspectionprocess and then digitize all
that so that when I sit down andI need that information as a
user, I can quickly run a report, run it based off of what
happened two weeks ago, threeweeks ago, three years ago, and
still find that information.
So that's how that came up, youknow, and in addition to that, a
(07:20):
lot of additional technologywas also used, whether it be IoT
devices such as RFID tags, rfidreaders, antennas, etc.
But in addition to that, youalso have equipment that's also
placed inside of yard trucks andfor those of you not familiar
with yard trucks, those are thepieces of equipment that
basically move traders fromposition a to position b and
(07:44):
that then becomes the means ofcommunication with those drivers
inside those yard trucks.
So instead of the days of havinga driver go into a shipping and
receiving office Identifyingwhat that next move is, writing
it down on a piece of paper,going back into the yard truck
performing that move task.
Those days are basicallyeliminated because now that
means of communication are donevia tablets that are actually
(08:05):
inside of the yard trucks andthe drivers get very clear
instructions as to what needs tobe moved from one location to
another.
So you know, those are justsome of the things that have
occurred over the past 10, 15years with these.
Yms solutions Is trying justmake these processes that much
simpler and easier fororganizations to complete,
streamlining their operationsand, in addition to that, having
(08:28):
the ability to go back andaudit things that may have
occurred in the past as well.
Blythe Brumleve (08:35):
I'm curious and either one of you you know feel
free to answer this but I'mcurious why this wouldn't
already be included in like aWMS technology.
Is that?
You know, just maybe the, thewarehouse technology, is
managing what's inside thewarehouse, versus the YMS, which
is managing what's unloadingand coming to the warehouse.
Do I understand that correctly?
Colin Mansfield (08:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right there.
Yeah, we're gonna talk, we'retrying to talk over each other.
Please do add, add on to this,because I know you have, you
have lots of insight here aswell.
But what we've seen is from aWMS standpoint You're right,
blight, that that would be sortof an obvious next step for a
WMS.
What we've seen is that thereare providers who do that.
(09:16):
Typically it's sort of treatedas an add-on, a bolt-on solution
, and whenever you're sort ofadding something on to a system
and that's not your primaryfocus, it sort of gets the
dredges of you know uh,certainly of of you know how to
use it, of the user experience,of the user interface.
It kind of gets left at thebottom there.
(09:37):
And so a lot of a lot ofcompanies what what we've seen
is that they'll implement a WMSyou got to have that, everybody
knows.
You got to have a WMS inside ofthe facility, right, um, and
then they'll turn theirattention to the yard and for
decades the yard was sort oftreated like the black hole.
It's like the cost of doingbusiness.
That's just sort of what we doand we track it on paper and
then when it gets to thewarehouse, that's when we really
(09:58):
track it Um.
Once these companies startedturning their attention to the
yard and started bringing it up,um, these what what might be
called specialty YMS vendorsstarted arising and going hey
look, the yard is actually worthfocusing on.
Uh, modern shipping yardsdeserve modern software.
Not an add-on, not a bolt-on,not an afterthought, but
(10:18):
something that's actuallydedicated and works really well.
Um, and so that's that's whatour company is Um.
But of course there are othersolutions out there and what
we've seen is that organizationstypically got to do their due
diligence.
They'll go out and they'll, youknow, do an rfp or they'll go
out and talk to a lot of vendorsUm, and generally, you know,
when it, when it stacks up, whencompanies, especially companies
(10:39):
like, are stacked up against Uhadd-on solutions, we typically
win the business becausecompanies see the value there.
Blythe Brumleve (10:46):
Yeah, absolutely anything to add.
Severiano Carnera (10:47):
seven yeah, without a doubt, he's absolutely
right.
Uh, you know those WMS systems.
They typically don't have asophisticated enough solution
for some of their customers, orthe there's some of their
customer base.
So many times those WMSproviders come to us and say,
hey, someone's looking for areally Integrated solution that
we can actually work with otherdevices to help streamline
(11:08):
operations.
What we offer it isn't asrobust as what you Offer, so
we'd like to partner with you,for example with a customer that
we have of ours.
So that happens quite often, uh, and I get it.
You know, their main focus isthe WMS, and I've many times
shared this with customers aswell too.
Look, there's plenty of goodWMS solutions out there, tms
(11:29):
solutions out there.
That's not what we do.
Our focus is strictly yardsolutions, and that's what makes
us a little bit unique as welltoo, because, uh to collins
point, you know we stress All ofthe yard activities and try and
streamline those in a much,much better fashion than also
trying to include WMS functionsas well.
Blythe Brumleve (11:49):
Yeah, definitely there's um.
Back when I used to work it atan asset based Brokerage, they
we had, you know, our TMSplatform and it had a CRM inside
of it and, as a marketer andworking in freight, it was not a
CRM.
It was a glorified just emaildatabase.
So I understand completely thecomparison of like just focus on
(12:10):
where you're really good at,and then it sounds like too,
because you know from goingthrough your website and
listening to the new warehousepodcast.
Shout out to Kevin, he does agreat job over there, I saw he
was just on your show.
Colin Mansfield (12:21):
That was awesome.
Blythe Brumleve (12:22):
Yeah, it's great to like connect with with
other industry podcasters, whichis crazy to think that there
are now, you know somewhere like40 or 50 of us, all you know,
creating content, which isawesome to see because there's
so many stories to be told.
And so when I was at theconference CSCMP, I was just
walking around on the trade showfloor and I saw these giant
(12:45):
displays of you know touchscreendevices and I was like what the
heck is that?
And I saw you know yardmanagement solutions and I just
went up and just randomlytouched one of the displays and
I was like oh wow, that'sactually really easy to do from
someone who knows nothing aboutyou know yard management
solutions, except for a veryhigh level.
So I imagine, for a lot of thefolks that you are onboarding,
(13:07):
that you're integrating with youknow, maybe they're not, as you
know, tech savvy and they see aplatform like this and it's the
adoption or the ease ofadoption is really easy for them
.
Could you talk a little bitabout you know sort of the
onboarding experience, what thatlooks like to help some of
these folks, you know, learn newtechnology, because it feels
(13:27):
like with your platform it'srelatively easy.
Colin, I'll go to you first.
Colin Mansfield (13:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
What we say is look, fromcontract signature to go live
takes about six weeks.
We can do it in less and weoften do because the system's
ready, let's just push it out.
And a very small portion ofthat is training.
Right, we set aside a fewtraining sessions, but you're
absolutely right.
I mean, our goal is, whetheryou're nine years old or 90
(13:52):
years old, you can jump on thesystem, you can play around with
it and you get the hang of it.
From a user interface standpoint, we know that the ability for
somebody to just sort of hopinto, even like a sandbox, and
just sort of play around andlearn the system and that's
irreplaceable.
So that's what we work reallyhard on focusing on, and
especially on our Eagle view,which is what you probably went
(14:13):
up and played with, which islike the digital map of the yard
and it shows where all thetrailers are.
You can drag and drop them tocreate those jockey drivers,
shunter driver hoesler moves.
You can drag a live trailer togenerate a text message to a
driver who's already in that, inthat asset, and get them to
move that trailer.
So it's just there's somereally neat things there, but
it's intuitive and it's designedto be.
(14:35):
You know, just be able to pickup.
So I mean, I could sit down withyou, give you a training.
In three hours.
You would go from a very highlevel understanding of the
system.
Three hours later you'd be apro.
It's really that easy.
And generally our customers,when they come to us, one of the
things they're looking for isthat they don't want to have to.
You know especially.
Sure, go live is go live, butyou've also got retraining,
(14:58):
you've got new hires, you've gotpeople coming on later, right?
So the our ability to make itas intuitive as possible
directly correlates to how happyour customers are.
So that's what we prioritize.
Blythe Brumleve (15:09):
Seve any comments on that.
Severiano Carnera (15:11):
No, I totally agree.
You know, and that's one beautyof our solution, the YMS
solution, is that it is verysimple to use.
I have been a part of otherorganizations where the YMS
solution was not as intuitive ormade it too complicated for end
users.
This solution is verystreamlined, very easy to use
and I love the fact that it'sthat easy to use.
(15:33):
To Colin's point, a yard driverwe can train them in 15 minutes
on how to use their portion ofthe application.
So it just depends on the userbase, the individual user who
you're training.
It may take a few minutes to athree hour session, like Colin
was mentioning, to make someonea super user.
So it does make it thatstreamlined, very easy process.
Blythe Brumleve (15:56):
Are you in freight sales with a book of
business looking for a new home?
Or perhaps you're a freightagent in need of a better
partnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
our podcast interview seriescalled the Freight Agent
Trenches, sponsored by SPILogistics.
Now I can tell you all day thatSPI is one of the most
successful logistics firms inNorth America, who helps their
(16:17):
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
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And what better way to do thatthan by listening to the
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Hit the freight agent link inour show notes to listen to
(16:38):
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit SPI3PLcom.
One of the things too.
While I was at CSCMP and I wasat your booth I was working
through.
What does this mean for drivers?
Because drivers, one of theirbigger complaints is that they
arrive at a facility and thatthey're waiting around for hours
(17:01):
.
No one can give them any kindof directions and their time is
being wasted Any time they'renot running a load, that they're
not earning money.
So from my understanding isthat this kind of technology
helps them to avoid that extratime where they're just waiting
around, not earning money andnot doing anything.
Is that a safe assumption?
Yeah, what are you?
Colin Mansfield (17:23):
doing oh, you want to go to me?
Yeah, sure, yeah, no.
Basically, basically, how welook at it is look, everybody
wins If we can expedite thisprocess.
Everybody wins because ourcustomers are often coming to us
because they're payingoutrageous detention fees.
They're not able to turn thosetrailers around in time.
They're getting charged.
But just because a company'scharging another company
(17:46):
detention doesn't mean thatother company is happy, right,
they still, like you're saying,time is money.
They would rather meet all thatfacility, meet all the time
hacks, get that load turned, getit off the facility, get it
moving, and certainly the driverwould.
Who's sitting there?
So for us it's a matter of youknow, really everybody wins.
But we've had to think about itin terms of what does this mean
(18:07):
from a user experience, userinterface side.
What does this mean for ourcustomer?
But what does this mean for thedriver?
A good example of that is a lotof facilities have gates.
Right, they have folks that aresitting in the gate, 24, seven,
for a lot of operations.
There could be two of themthere, but the gates gets very
busy, but it's not always busy.
Right, there's down times.
(18:27):
You're still paying thoseemployees to sit there.
So what a lot of facilities arelooking at now is trying to
expedite that by removing theneed for personnel at the gate
and putting, for example, atouchscreen device like a kiosk
out there where a driver cancheck themselves in.
It could have a camera whereyou can scan a QR code for your
appointment.
It could be very simple andjust be a sort of a touch, a
touchscreen where you put inyour appointment number.
(18:48):
But either way, the result isthe same, which is that that
driver, instead of having towait, produce paperwork, do the
whole rigmarole back and forthat the gate, now there's a
backup and the driver 15 trucksbehind is getting frustrated.
Right, we can just expeditethat whole process, get folks
into the yard, get them moving,and so that, by the way, saves
that facility a ton of money aswell.
(19:09):
So again, it's an everythingeverybody wins scenario and
that's that's what we prioritize.
The other example that I gave ofthe live load you know some of
our customers are primarily dropload facilities.
Driver comes in leaves ortrailer leaves.
Some of them are primarily liveloads.
A lot of them are a mix, and sobeing able to handle those live
(19:30):
loads becomes very, verycritical from a facility
standpoint.
They get very frustrated if,for example, a driver comes in,
gets sent to a waiting areabecause their dock's not
available, and then, when thatdock is available, somebody from
the facility has to go knock onthat driver's doors.
Hey, go to this dock.
They don't have a walkie talkie, right, so it's a whole thing.
With our system, we can sendthat driver a text just letting
(19:52):
him know hey, your doc's nowavailable, it's time to move.
And even if that solves 50% ofthe issues with getting drivers
to the right docks, that's 50%savings in terms of that time
and that's great for these, forthese operations.
So we we think of it from both,from both perspectives, because
everybody needs to win for thisto be expedited.
Blythe Brumleve (20:14):
For sure there's too many silos right now
or not right now, buthistorically that have existed,
you know, within the industry,not just you know on this side,
but you know maritime intermodal, of course, as well.
I'm curious and Seve, I'll goto you for this one how do you
know, as a business, that you'reready for a YMS solution?
Severiano Carnera (20:34):
Sure.
So you know, typically we dohave demographics that will sort
of point you in the directionthat you need a YMS system.
You know, typically we'retalking and I've been a part of
some organizations that havevery, very large yards, which is
very easy to identify hey, youneed help with this.
But I've also seen someoperations that are much smaller
, let's say maybe 30 docks, 40parking spots, but they're
(20:57):
running a manufacturing process,for example, and it's very
important to obviously keepthose manufacturing lines up and
running.
So you identify things likethat out in the yard or when you
pay visits to these customersand you identify these things,
that these are really somepoints of improvement that you
could use so that you don't quit.
You know you don't stop youroperations.
(21:19):
But from baseline standpoint,there's a lot of things that go
into it, whether it be thenumber of yard trucks in use,
whether it be the number oftransactions per day coming in
and out of the facility, whetherit be you have reefers or not.
It's just a whole differentsmorgasbord of items that can be
included in there to determinethat.
But you know what, I don'tthink I've ever been to a site
(21:40):
that's not in need of a YMSsolution at some point in some
form or fashion, whether it be avery simple solution where
you're just taking appointments,for example, to understand what
may be coming in at given timesand what's leaving at certain
times, or it may be something assimple as just understanding
what inventory you have at thatpoint in time, so that you don't
have to go out there and dothose manual yard checks.
(22:01):
So, again, the gamut rangesfrom very small to very large
facilities.
But at the end of the day, Istill feel very strongly that a
lot of organizations need thesetypes of solutions and don't
realize it yet.
Blythe Brumleve (22:18):
OK, it's one of those.
It sounds almost like it's oneof those aha moments that happen
after you get the system andyou start seeing all of the
efficiency improvements and thenthat ultimately adds to ROI.
Colin, is that a safeassumption?
Colin Mansfield (22:31):
No, it absolutely is.
What I was going to say is justto add on because Seve is
absolutely right a lot oforganizations that come to us,
the sentence that I'm about tosay really resonates with them,
which is they've outgrown theircurrent manual systems, whatever
those are.
It could be at bolt-on to a WMSthat requires manual tracking,
(22:52):
it could be paper and pencil, itcould be anything in between,
but that feeling of like thisisn't working anymore.
Whatever system we're usingisn't working.
Generally, organizations don'tcome to us because they're doing
a bad job managing their yard.
Chances are they're doing avery, very good job, but they've
outgrown those manual systemsand it's becoming frustrating.
Most companies that come to usare growing.
(23:13):
They're adding capacity,they're adding yards or they
desire to grow, and they knowthey have the resources to make
that happen.
But they're not sure that whenthey grow they're going to be
able to track all of those newassets at their facility.
So I've never met a yard thatisn't doing their best.
Everybody's trying to do theirbest out there.
All we're doing is enhancingthat with additional tools.
Blythe Brumleve (23:37):
So what are those?
I guess so say a new customergets signed on, they get.
Within six weeks, they getactivated, everything is rolling
.
What are some of those early, Iguess ROI signals to them?
Is there a way to create thosekind of reports, or is it more
of just like a feel of a greaterefficiency while working within
(23:58):
the system?
What are some of those just ahamoments that your customers are
experiencing?
Colin Mansfield (24:04):
I'll share a few stories and then Seve if you
want to jump in and share otherinsights you've seen from a
broader perspective.
We had a customer who came tous because they were, for
example, opening up the backs oftrailers at night, shining
flashlights inside, to figureout what they were loading, what
they had loaded earlier in theday.
They were getting ready to shipout, and they go, oh crap, we
(24:24):
don't know what's what.
And they said it would be greatif you could just tell us what
was on each trailer.
And so for this customer thatwas like three employees every
night spending a couple hours.
What we figured out is if wecould implement a solution to
keep them from having to do this.
It'd save them about 50 grand ayear.
And so it was a very simplesolution.
We integrated with their WMS.
We did an API integration.
(24:45):
Their WMS sends whatinformation is getting loaded
onto a trailer in YMS.
When you hover your mousecursor over the trailer, it
tells you what's on it and youcan type into a search bar a
part number and it highlightsthat trailer on the screen.
It's that easy.
So things like that sometimesit's bespoke sort of ROI, for
customer has a specific problemand we do something to solve it.
(25:06):
A lot of customers suffer fromthe same types of issues, so
some of the broad ones.
Detention is a scourge.
A lot of organizations arepaying unnecessary detention
fees and it's really what itcomes down to is visibility.
If we can tell you what's aboutto go into detention, you can
prioritize that and get it movedright, get it loaded, get it
off the yard.
And so for us, a lot of timesthat's sending an alert, sending
(25:28):
an email, changing a trailer,make it right on the screen and
just letting you know hey, thisis an issue.
One of our customers, michelinMichelin Tire.
At one of their facilities theysaved $2.5 million in a single
year from unnecessary detention.
They were no longer payingAnother facility $450,000 in a
single year.
Now, those aren't commonnumbers, those are outliers,
(25:51):
right, but it shows you thepower of just visibility and
saying things.
Another big ROI piece that we'veseen is for those yard jockeys,
yard drivers, hustlers,whatever you want to call them
is being able to prioritize whatyou know routes, who's moving
what where and we've seen thisboth in terms of ROI, in terms
(26:12):
of efficiency, but also in termsof actually greenhouse gas
emissions.
If we can prioritize andprovide ideal routes for drivers
to take and they're able topick the best moves or be
presented with the best movesgiven their current location.
That's actually less fuelexpenditure.
So some larger organizationsthat are looking for ways to go
(26:32):
green are looking for theseinteresting opportunities that
are a little bit outside of thebox and allows them to say, hey
look, we are actuallyprioritizing this, not just in
the facility but outside thefacility as well.
So those are a couple areas,seve, if you want to add
anything on.
Severiano Carnera (26:49):
Yeah, and it's a great question, boy.
Typically I usually tellcustomers you're not going to
see any ROI until probably threemonths after using the system,
because then you've got the databehind it to go back and check
and verify certain activities.
So, whether it be the number ofyard moves that our drivers are
completing per hour or whetherit be making sure you manage
(27:10):
refit units, again those are bigcost savings that you see over
time.
One thing that I have workedwithin the past is refit units
are near and dear to my heartand I've worked with a lot of
protein organizations, meaningphysical livestock that comes in
on hooves and then leaves inpackages, so you can imagine how
(27:31):
much a trader worth of baconwould cost, for example.
And their big number one thingwas we cannot allow to have
spoilage occur out in the yardand lose one of those loads.
So, again, our ability to beable to manage that in and of
itself, the saving of one traderwould pay for the system on its
own.
So it doesn't typically happenthat quickly because obviously
(27:51):
we avoid those things, but thoseare types of scenarios, use
cases that they present us withthat they've come across in the
past as well.
Colin Mansfield (28:01):
I'll share another story with you real
quick, but that's it.
I'm sorry not to cut you off,but this is where.
Blythe Brumleve (28:06):
I love this one .
Colin Mansfield (28:07):
We were talking with the steel manufacturer.
They came to us because theyhad this problem and if they had
had a YMS they wouldn't havehad this problem.
Basically, they had two hundredand twenty thousand dollars
worth of finished product.
Hi, my wife coming in to giveme a croissant.
I love it.
Blythe Brumleve (28:26):
Nice, that's a good wife.
Colin Mansfield (28:28):
She is an amazing wife.
Hannah is amazing, we have.
So we had this company thatcame to us because they had two
hundred and twenty thousanddollars worth of finished
product.
They had gotten mixed up with ascrap trailer.
They sent the finished productto the scrap yard and you know
those are the types of servicefailure costs to seven point
that pays for the more than paysfor the system right and being
(28:50):
able to avoid.
Sometimes it's what can we save, what can we reduce something.
Sometimes it's what can wetotally avoid.
And every operation is a littledifferent.
Less than a year is very commonfor hitting ROI with our
customers To save a point mighttake three months to realize
that initially.
The next three months often iswhen they hit that ROI and
certainly by the end of the year.
Blythe Brumleve (29:11):
Yeah, it definitely.
It's starting to really makesense, you know, with avoiding
the spoilage on food by justsimple notifications, avoiding
detention fees by simplenotifications, just you know,
correcting or, I guess, closingthe communication gap between
the workers within your facility.
I'm curious as to, after youknow the, the software, is it
(29:33):
implemented or integrated intothe system?
What does that look like fromyou know?
Just, I guess an internalmanagement is someone you know
specifically looking at the,your YMS solution, you know,
throughout the day.
Is it integrated into theircurrent tech stack?
I imagine it's probablydifferent.
But is someone responsible fornow, you know, watching that
software or does it kind of justfit in to the current roles or
(29:57):
do you have to hire a new roleto manage the expectations
around?
You know, those differentnotifications and things like
that, if that question makessense.
Yeah it does make sense, yeah no, you don't.
Severiano Carnera (30:10):
That that's.
The beauty of this is that youreally don't need to hire
additional folks.
If anything, I usually tellcustomers, instead of having
folks, for example, answeringphone calls, answering or
responding to emails for anappointment, for example, you
can then move those personnel todo other things within your
yard.
So it's a matter of just movingpeople around and not focusing
(30:32):
on those daily mundane types oftasks of you know, responding to
emails, phone calls, things ofthat nature because, again, even
a simple appointment managementsolution which has included in
our solution, by the way takesaway some of that responsibility
and people can do that onlinenow versus having to do that
manually.
So there's a lot of differentthings like that.
You don't have to have someonemonitor the solution.
(30:54):
The system basically runsitself and then, based on your
role, you're just, you know,interacting with the solution to
get activities done.
So, for example, if I'm a docworker and I need a specific
trader to be brought to aspecific doctor, I can go out
into the system, identify thetrader that I need, create a
(31:15):
move request to have that tradermove to that door, and then
that move request gets sent tothe drivers and then they
complete that move.
So it's not as if someone hasto monitor the solution.
It just enhances what they'recurrently doing and it makes it
a much more easier process inthat again they don't have to
communicate with drivers overradio or things of that nature
Just streamlines thoseoperations much, much better.
Blythe Brumleve (31:39):
Yeah, that definitely makes a ton of sense
where your employees they canjust focus on things that
probably have a greater impactthan you know dealing with
communications back and forthand wasting a lot of time in
that regard.
One, a couple more questionsbased on that that.
You know the new warehousepodcast.
You know one thing I heard thatyou guys that I really liked is
(32:00):
that you are listening tocustomers and then making
additional features andintegrations into the platform
after listening to them.
What does sort of that processlook like?
Is it, you know, sort of theYMS solution is just you know
off the off the shelf and thenyou can make custom integrations
or solutions after that or someof these things more, I guess,
(32:21):
dependent on the company that'susing them.
Colin Mansfield (32:24):
Well, that's a great question.
Kind of both, actually, andthis really came out of a desire
to be.
We call ourselves, we're acustomer service company,
cleverly disguised as a yardmanagement company.
I think any good softwarecompany should be that right For
us.
You know, we started going tothe MHI trade shows Modex,
(32:45):
promat and we wanted to compete.
We said you know, they have abest IT innovation award.
We've got some cool stuff onour system.
What are we going to show off?
Well, we're going to show offwhat we've built for our
customers.
Right, every customer that comesto us has some, some variety of
either requirements orchallenges that they say I don't
(33:05):
care how you solve it, as longas you solve it right.
So what we do is we sit down,we have a discussion with them,
we figure out can current thingsin the system solve this and if
so, let's set those up.
And if not, we'll say, look, isthis something you'd like us to
add in?
And they go yeah, absolutelygreat.
And we go to these trade shows,we show off what we've built.
We've won awards.
You know, five years in a rowbeen recognized or been a
(33:27):
finalist or one best ITinnovation award, and it's it's
not waving a magic wand, it'snot like a pat on the back, it's
like we just listen to ourcustomers every year without
fail.
What we found is that there'sreally no such thing as a unique
problem.
It might feel unique to many ofthese operations, but often
several different types of ofoperations are suffering from
something similar, and so for us, if we can just prioritize
(33:50):
listening to customers gettinginto the system, that pays
dividends later on as well.
So, to directly answer yourquestion, sometimes that happens
early in that implementation,right, and they, they come to us
.
They say, look, we really needX, can you provide it?
And we say, look, it's not inthe system, but we can build it.
Sometimes that happens later on.
I say most often it happenslater on.
(34:11):
We go live.
For example, we've hadcustomers.
Very common for customers tocome to us and go let's
integrate with our you know GPSunits on owned assets in the
yard.
Let's integrate with ourtransportation management system
so that we can get appointmentsfed directly into YMS.
Let's integrate with the WMSsystem so we can get that cool
hover over a trailer.
See what's inside of it.
(34:31):
We call that X-ray vision that'sour marketing marketing term
for it and and so we'll treatthat as a phase two, as a phase
three after go live.
We support both, though we justwent live with a customer in
Atlanta.
Seve and I both flew down thereand hung out for better part of
a week on my end, and for themthey had some specific requests
(34:51):
with regards to reefer units.
Something that we added intothe system that we're making
available for all of ourcustomers is the ability to
track multiple zones of reeferunits.
You know, some reefer unitshave refrigerated in one part of
the trailer, frozen in anotherpart and you know, dry in
another part, and so the abilityto track all three of those,
(35:13):
for example, was critical forthis operation, and so we added
that in right, and we're alwayshappy to do that.
Blythe Brumleve (35:20):
Yeah, that sounds really cool.
And there was another featuretoo that I was reading on your
website, not just the you knowsaving costs you know a
potential spoilage on reefersbut also from loss prevention.
You know, with so much fraudgoing on within the industry,
how does the how does yoursolution, I guess, help with
(35:40):
other areas of loss prevention?
I assume maybe the steelexample.
Colin Mansfield (35:45):
Yeah, no, the steel example is a great one,
Knowing what's in the yard atany given time.
A lot of operations are doingcurrent inventory already.
Right, they're doing a yardcheck at least once a day,
probably more likely once ashift or twice a shift, to try
to get that inventory In oursystem.
You go to current inventoryreport, you hit Excel, it
downloads the inventory, you'redone.
So it keeps it really easy tosee what's on the yard now and
(36:08):
if you do that periodically youcan see what's on the yard now,
what wasn't on the yard before.
Run historical reports figureout where things went.
You know a lot of our customershave already gated facilities
so for them it's like, hey, wethought this trailer was here,
it was gated out.
Who gated it out?
When did it happen?
Who touched that trailer withour system?
They can go back and find that,whereas in the past maybe that
(36:30):
was a bit of a mystery All right.
Blythe Brumleve (36:33):
Well, I think.
I mean, obviously it soundslike this was one of those tools
that, like I said, I was at theconference and I walked by and
it struck me how easy to use thesoftware was, and so that was
my reasoning for reaching out toyou guys and now to hear so
much more about it in the lossprevention, I think is really
key.
Saving driver's time is alsoreally key.
(36:56):
And then also from the customerstandpoint, or the you know the
, just the warehouse itself,just being able to make your
operations much move, much moreefficiently.
Tough markets like this.
You got to be able to findthose edges and find those ways
to become more efficient andmore productive.
Seville, I'll go to you.
Last question Are there anyimportant features that you
(37:18):
think that we should havementioned that we haven't talked
about already?
Severiano Carnera (37:21):
Sure, sure.
So I'll mention some features,for example, for manufacturing
processes.
So when you have a manufacturingprocess, a lot of times those
manufacturing processes includehaving specific traders with
certain product come to the samedoors on a regular basis.
So I'll give you an example foran automotive industry, for
example, you may have three orfour doors where everything that
(37:42):
goes through those three orfour doors are always tires and
you don't want to shut down theproduction line.
So what you do is, once thattrader gets emptied and you know
that there's no more tires onthere, an automatic call to
remove that trader from thatdock door can be generated from
our solution and at that pointit will look into the inventory
(38:03):
in the yard, identify the nexttrader with tires in it and call
that trader to that dock door.
So instead of me sitting thereand entering those moves into
the system, the system canautomatically do that and move
these traders back and forth, sothat there's no human
intervention involved there andthe possibility of someone
making a mistake or forgettingto call the trader to that dock
(38:24):
door.
So that's just one example.
I've done that with automotives, with tubes of toothpaste, you
name it.
I've done it with manydifferent types of things from
the manufacturing standpoint.
So it's always important forthose types of operations to
make sure you streamline thosebasic functions, to make sure
you always have the rawmaterials at those dock doors in
(38:44):
order to keep that productionline moving.
Blythe Brumleve (38:48):
Yes, smart.
That's something I never eventhought of from that lens that
it would just make more sense tohave all of the tires unloaded
at once within one area of thewarehouse, versus, you know,
scattered all around and thenyou're scattering your team and
creates more inefficiencies.
Call it the same to youAnything that you feel is
important to mention that wehaven't already talked about.
Colin Mansfield (39:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think a good place to endthis is to just if you're in
operation and you're listeningto this, or you are in an
operation and you go.
Yeah, this sounds like we'reoutgrowing our manual processes.
This sounds like something thatcould benefit us.
You know there's severalsolutions out there that you can
take a look at, and wementioned the difference between
(39:32):
sort of like an add-on and abespoke or a specialty tool.
Within each of those, there'sconsiderations to make.
You know.
One of those is do you go witha system that includes sensors
or do you go with a system thatis process-driven?
Sensor-based systems are goingto be what Seve talked about at
the beginning, something thatuses like RFID tags, for example
, that you got to put on everytrailer, whereas a
(39:56):
process-driven system, like weprovide, is something that
doesn't require additionalhardware beyond maybe a tablet
you put inside of those jockeyvehicles.
Now you got to weigh pros andcons to each and every operation
has to make this call.
From an RFID standpoint, what alot of operations have to
consider is, if you don't ownyour own assets, you're going to
(40:16):
have to put those physicalsensors on every trailer that
enters or exits your yard, andif you forget to pull them off,
then you got to buy new ones.
Rfid sensors break.
Seve's worked for operationsthat have implemented RFID
solutions and so he can attestto this.
Maintenance is required.
You got to repurchase tags and,unfortunately, although some
(40:39):
really good sales reps may saythey're very accurate, they're
only accurate up to three tofive spots, which means a lot of
times.
If you really care about whatdoctrine or what spot is this
asset on, and you've got threeor four trailers stacked on top
of each other, how do youdifferentiate?
You do a yard check, which iswhat a lot of these operations
are doing now.
(40:59):
Anyhow, in our solution we can,like I said, get live in six
weeks, no additional hardware topurchase.
Employees do their jobs as theynormally would.
They have a tablet wherethey're tapping buttons on a
screen to indicate what's goingon.
We integrate with everysolution that's out there and
it's very, very easy to use.
So again, what I would say is doyour due diligence.
(41:20):
If you're an operation that'slooking for a YMS, you're not
going to make a bad choice.
It's better to have a YMS thanto not.
But as you're weighingdifferent options, look at not
only feature set and whether ornot there's hardware involved,
but also ask for references, Say, hey, who are some of your
customers who can give us somefeedback on your solution?
(41:41):
And, of course, anybody thatwants to reach out to us.
I'm happy to.
Our customers are our bestsalesman is what I always say.
I'm happy to provide you withthose references.
But it's a lot of fun.
Working in this industry is alot of fun.
The very last thing I'll say isit's really a pleasure working
with people in the yard space,people from all different
(42:03):
backgrounds, people with alldifferent skill sets, all
different knowledge levels andall different experience levels.
We did a training last, acouple of weeks ago now, where
there was somebody who had beenwith the company for 12 years,
for two years, for two monthsand for two days in that
training session and none ofthem knew anything about yard
management.
And so to sit down and say,look, we're going to bring a
(42:24):
whole new way of doing businessinto your yard, and to see the
excitement.
I mean that's why we do.
What we do right Is to not somuch help the companies.
That's great, but really, if Ican help an end user, whether
that's a person who's using oursystem or a driver coming onto
that facility.
Save time.
That's really what our job is.
Blythe Brumleve (42:41):
Yeah, and I would just to piggyback off of
your, your, your customersentiment.
One of the the I always ask yes, you know, to send in some
previous interviews you've doneor any kind of YouTube videos or
things like that, and one ofthe YouTube videos that you guys
sent over was just clips ofyour customers talking about the
money that they've saved, theproblems that you guys have
solved for them.
It was, you know, no fluff,just straight customer insight.
(43:04):
Um, so I thought that that wasum really good and um, one
couple quick final things um,where can folks follow more of
your work?
Um, and then also, can we get aglimpse of Seve's dog in the
background?
Colin Mansfield (43:16):
We should see the dog first.
Show us.
Blythe Brumleve (43:21):
Sitting nice to the fire, next to the fireplace
.
I think for a lot of folks thistime of the year you definitely
want to be right there to be adog.
Colin Mansfield (43:29):
You got to go make some hot cocoa and put it
right next to him.
Blythe Brumleve (43:33):
Put a little Santa hat on.
It is that time of the year nowto officially.
Colin Mansfield (43:37):
Oh, I know I know, oh my gosh, start the
Christmas music man.
Um yes, I, you can find us, yardmanagement solutionscom.
That's our website.
You can watch videos.
We got client testimonials.
We just added a uh, I think, acase study that you can check
out for one of our cold storagecustomers on there.
Uh, linkedin I'm on LinkedIn.
Colin Mansfield, seve Carnerais on LinkedIn as well.
(43:59):
Um, and you can find ourcompany on LinkedIn also.
Um, and then, finally, freightX represent, please advise,
freight X.
Find me on Twitter, colinMansfield.
Our company, yard managementsolutions, is on Twitter as well
.
X, formerly known as Twitter,whatever we're supposed to call
it.
Blythe Brumleve (44:15):
Just sounds so much better.
Well, guys, I appreciate theinsight today.
I appreciate you know that.
You know it's entertaining.
My, my fifth grade levelquestions learned a ton more
about you know YMS technology,um, today, and all of the
efficiencies that it creates andcost savings, loss prevention,
all that good stuff.
So this, this was a coollearning experience.
(44:37):
So appreciate your guys.
Time, um and uh, we'll makesure to put all those links in
the show notes to make it supereasy for folks.
But, um, unfortunately the dogis not included, or the
croissant is not included inthis broadcast.
Colin Mansfield (44:50):
Watch the video for those special features.
Blythe Brumleve (44:58):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of
everything is logistics, apodcast for the thinkers in it
Freight, telling the storiesbehind how your favorite stuff
and people get from point A to B.
Subscribe to the show, sign upfor our newsletter and follow
our socials over at everythingis logisticscom.
And in addition to the podcast,I also wanted to let y'all know
about another company I operateand that's digital dispatch,
(45:20):
where we help you build a betterwebsite.
Now, a lot of the times, wehand this task of building a new
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Well, that doesn't happen atdigital dispatch.
(45:41):
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(46:25):
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Until then, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
Welcome into another episode of Everything Is
Logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We were proudly presented bySPI Logistics and I'm your host,
Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a special show foryou today.
I feel like I say that beforeevery episode, but we've been
having some really greatconversations on the pod as of
late, and today is a first forthe pod where we have two guests
that are appearing on the show,and so we got Sev and we got
(00:30):
Colin, both from Yard ManagementSolutions, and we're going to
be talking about just what thehell you're missing out on.
When it comes to YMS technology, I have a very, admittedly,
very like in introductory levelknowledge, so hopefully you guys
don't mind my fifth gradersstyle questions when it comes to
this.
(00:50):
So welcome into the show.
First of all.
Colin Mansfield (00:52):
Hey, thank you so much, Blythe.
It's great to be on here.
I've been a sort of distantadmirer of your podcast for a
little while and seen you onTwitter and everything, so it's
pretty cool to be on here.
Blythe Brumleve (01:04):
I mean, yeah, obviously you got the hat on the
.
Please advise hats.
So, you're part of the ganggang.
You know that's been developingon social media, which is great
to see.
You know the freight communitystart to come together.
Let's start with you.
Know sort of job roles, seve,I'll start with you.
What is sort of your role?
Where are you, you know,calling in from?
(01:25):
Give us sort of a lay of theland for you.
Severiano Carnera (01:28):
Sure, sure.
So thanks for having us.
But yeah, first of all I'm fromthe Dallas Fort Worth area, so
things are super exciting herein Dallas right now, especially
with the Rangers about to winthe World Series knock on wood.
But yeah, so I live in theDallas Fort Worth area.
My role here with YMS is, firstof all, I support the sales
staff from a solution standpoint.
(01:48):
So my background involves over10 years of experience in the
YMS space, meaning I've workedwith a lot of YMS products.
So I support them from astandpoint of being that trusted
advisor, that person that wantsto help that customer find
solutions to their use cases, totheir pain points.
And then my second role here isreally in charge of the product
(02:10):
, making sure that the productneeds to be where it needs to be
from a standpoint of ourcustomers, making sure that
we're competitive against ourother competitive landscape as
well too.
And then making sure that someof the things that I see that
need upgrading, fixing thingsthat will get us up to even par
with our competitors or evenbeyond.
That is part of my role as welltoo.
(02:31):
So so far I've loved my rolehere and I love working with
Colin and the rest of the team.
Blythe Brumleve (02:36):
Awesome.
I appreciate that insightbecause I definitely want to get
into a little bit of thehistory of YMS technology and
where it's come from and wherewe're going.
But before we get to that,colin, give us a sense of your
role, where you're calling usfrom all that good stuff.
Colin Mansfield (02:52):
Absolutely.
Yeah, my name is ColinMansfield.
I am in Southern California,east of LA, kind of out by the
desert Beaumont specifically.
So I always joke because a lotof our companies up in Michigan,
when it starts getting cold inCalifornia, people really start
giving me a hard time.
Like that's not cold, man, itgoes.
It dips below 60.
I gotta put the heavy jacket on.
(03:15):
My background is not logistics.
I've been working for YMS forfour years.
My title is company VP.
Prior to this I was actually inthe United States Army working
at Air Missile Defense as alieutenant and then as a captain
.
My wife and I had our first babyand I decided, hey, I don't
want to be deployed all the time, maybe time for a change, sort
(03:35):
of looking for otheropportunities that were out
there and landed at yardmanagement solutions.
What's interesting to me aboutlogistics is I had zero interest
prior to joining this company.
To me it seemed very dull andas I started learning more and
more, I learned that there'sreally always something new to
(03:55):
discover.
And there's always somethingnew to learn.
You can peel back the onion andjust keep peeling, keep peeling
, keep peeling and, as I'm sureyou can attest to, there's
always something new.
So for me, I developed thislove of logistics and supply
chain and freight and kind ofall things logistics and
couldn't be more thrilled to behere.
So I'm very excited for thisjob and where the future of
(04:18):
freight is going.
Blythe Brumleve (04:20):
Yeah, I think logistics as a whole like for
the overwhelming majority ofpeople, once you joined into it,
it just gets its fingernails inyou and then it just doesn't
let you go.
I want to talk about just why.
Because you guys have a greatbrand name, yard management
solutions, which is also theacronym that most people use for
the technology as well.
(04:41):
So great SEO play on that.
Colin Mansfield (04:42):
That's exactly it.
Yes, it's wonderful.
It can be a little confusing.
People will be like, oh, I'veused your system before like a
YMS and I'm like, oh well, yeah,maybe we are the YMS.
Blythe Brumleve (04:55):
It's almost like there's a restaurant in New
York.
The title is called Tie FoodNear Me, and so they took
advantage of local SEO to try toget people who are searching
for tie food.
So they just named the entirerestaurant Tie Food Near Me.
So I love it.
It's a chess level thinkingwhen everybody else is playing
checkers, but for folks who youknow Seve, I'll go to you first.
(05:19):
What is the history of YMStechnology?
Was it just paper and pen thatslowly evolved into technology?
Give us a little bit of aglimpse from the historical
perspective.
Severiano Carnera (05:32):
Sure, sure.
So you're exactly right.
You know a lot of organizationsstill to this day are still
working off paper and pencilactivities.
So, whether it being going outto the yard, for example, and
doing a yard check to identifywhat inventory they have in the
yard at any given point in time,they're doing that manual
process where they're walkingaround the yard writing down
(05:53):
what they have in the yard.
After they've completed a taskwhich may take a couple of hours
, go back inside and turn thatinto a spreadsheet where that
can be shared with everyonewithin the organization.
The challenge is with some ofthose things, though, is that as
soon as you've written it down,it's no longer of any use up to
you, because the yard changesdynamically throughout the day,
throughout a couple of hours,depending on how large the
(06:14):
facility is, and then you throw,you know, additional
circumstances like, for example,if you have refrigerated units
out in the yard.
Refrigerated, we call reefersin the industry.
Those units have to bemaintained as well too.
From a standpoint ofunderstanding.
Do they have enough fuel insidethat refrigerator unit to keep
running?
Are the temperatures at thecorrect temperature settings?
(06:36):
Is that temperature settingstill staying at what it should
be?
So there's a lot of intricaciesthat can be involved with those
types of things.
So as a result of that,companies came up with the idea
of you know what?
Let's try and digitize thisentire process so you know
whether it be the arrival of atrader at the gate.
Let's get that importantinformation about that unit
(06:57):
coming into the facility andthen capture anything like, for
example, maybe an inspectionprocess and then digitize all
that so that when I sit down andI need that information as a
user, I can quickly run a report, run it based off of what
happened two weeks ago, threeweeks ago, three years ago, and
still find that information.
So that's how that came up, youknow, and in addition to that, a
(07:20):
lot of additional technologywas also used, whether it be IoT
devices such as RFID tags, rfidreaders, antennas, etc.
But in addition to that, youalso have equipment that's also
placed inside of yard trucks andfor those of you not familiar
with yard trucks, those are thepieces of equipment that
basically move traders fromposition a to position b and
(07:44):
that then becomes the means ofcommunication with those drivers
inside those yard trucks.
So instead of the days of havinga driver go into a shipping and
receiving office Identifyingwhat that next move is, writing
it down on a piece of paper,going back into the yard truck
performing that move task.
Those days are basicallyeliminated because now that
means of communication are donevia tablets that are actually
(08:05):
inside of the yard trucks andthe drivers get very clear
instructions as to what needs tobe moved from one location to
another.
So you know, those are justsome of the things that have
occurred over the past 10, 15years with these.
Yms solutions Is trying justmake these processes that much
simpler and easier fororganizations to complete,
streamlining their operationsand, in addition to that, having
(08:28):
the ability to go back andaudit things that may have
occurred in the past as well.
Blythe Brumleve (08:35):
I'm curious and either one of you you know feel
free to answer this but I'mcurious why this wouldn't
already be included in like aWMS technology.
Is that?
You know, just maybe the, thewarehouse technology, is
managing what's inside thewarehouse, versus the YMS, which
is managing what's unloadingand coming to the warehouse.
Do I understand that correctly?
Colin Mansfield (08:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right there.
Yeah, we're gonna talk, we'retrying to talk over each other.
Please do add, add on to this,because I know you have, you
have lots of insight here aswell.
But what we've seen is from aWMS standpoint You're right,
blight, that that would be sortof an obvious next step for a
WMS.
What we've seen is that thereare providers who do that.
(09:16):
Typically it's sort of treatedas an add-on, a bolt-on solution
, and whenever you're sort ofadding something on to a system
and that's not your primaryfocus, it sort of gets the
dredges of you know uh,certainly of of you know how to
use it, of the user experience,of the user interface.
It kind of gets left at thebottom there.
(09:37):
And so a lot of a lot ofcompanies what what we've seen
is that they'll implement a WMSyou got to have that, everybody
knows.
You got to have a WMS inside ofthe facility, right, um, and
then they'll turn theirattention to the yard and for
decades the yard was sort oftreated like the black hole.
It's like the cost of doingbusiness.
That's just sort of what we doand we track it on paper and
then when it gets to thewarehouse, that's when we really
(09:58):
track it Um.
Once these companies startedturning their attention to the
yard and started bringing it up,um, these what what might be
called specialty YMS vendorsstarted arising and going hey
look, the yard is actually worthfocusing on.
Uh, modern shipping yardsdeserve modern software.
Not an add-on, not a bolt-on,not an afterthought, but
(10:18):
something that's actuallydedicated and works really well.
Um, and so that's that's whatour company is Um.
But of course there are othersolutions out there and what
we've seen is that organizationstypically got to do their due
diligence.
They'll go out and they'll, youknow, do an rfp or they'll go
out and talk to a lot of vendorsUm, and generally, you know,
when it, when it stacks up, whencompanies, especially companies
(10:39):
like, are stacked up against Uhadd-on solutions, we typically
win the business becausecompanies see the value there.
Blythe Brumleve (10:46):
Yeah, absolutely anything to add.
Severiano Carnera (10:47):
seven yeah, without a doubt, he's absolutely
right.
Uh, you know those WMS systems.
They typically don't have asophisticated enough solution
for some of their customers, orthe there's some of their
customer base.
So many times those WMSproviders come to us and say,
hey, someone's looking for areally Integrated solution that
we can actually work with otherdevices to help streamline
(11:08):
operations.
What we offer it isn't asrobust as what you Offer, so
we'd like to partner with you,for example with a customer that
we have of ours.
So that happens quite often, uh, and I get it.
You know, their main focus isthe WMS, and I've many times
shared this with customers aswell too.
Look, there's plenty of goodWMS solutions out there, tms
(11:29):
solutions out there.
That's not what we do.
Our focus is strictly yardsolutions, and that's what makes
us a little bit unique as welltoo, because, uh to collins
point, you know we stress All ofthe yard activities and try and
streamline those in a much,much better fashion than also
trying to include WMS functionsas well.
Blythe Brumleve (11:49):
Yeah, definitely there's um.
Back when I used to work it atan asset based Brokerage, they
we had, you know, our TMSplatform and it had a CRM inside
of it and, as a marketer andworking in freight, it was not a
CRM.
It was a glorified just emaildatabase.
So I understand completely thecomparison of like just focus on
(12:10):
where you're really good at,and then it sounds like too,
because you know from goingthrough your website and
listening to the new warehousepodcast.
Shout out to Kevin, he does agreat job over there, I saw he
was just on your show.
Colin Mansfield (12:21):
That was awesome.
Blythe Brumleve (12:22):
Yeah, it's great to like connect with with
other industry podcasters, whichis crazy to think that there
are now, you know somewhere like40 or 50 of us, all you know,
creating content, which isawesome to see because there's
so many stories to be told.
And so when I was at theconference CSCMP, I was just
walking around on the trade showfloor and I saw these giant
(12:45):
displays of you know touchscreendevices and I was like what the
heck is that?
And I saw you know yardmanagement solutions and I just
went up and just randomlytouched one of the displays and
I was like oh wow, that'sactually really easy to do from
someone who knows nothing aboutyou know yard management
solutions, except for a veryhigh level.
So I imagine, for a lot of thefolks that you are onboarding,
(13:07):
that you're integrating with youknow, maybe they're not, as you
know, tech savvy and they see aplatform like this and it's the
adoption or the ease ofadoption is really easy for them
.
Could you talk a little bitabout you know sort of the
onboarding experience, what thatlooks like to help some of
these folks, you know, learn newtechnology, because it feels
(13:27):
like with your platform it'srelatively easy.
Colin, I'll go to you first.
Colin Mansfield (13:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
What we say is look, fromcontract signature to go live
takes about six weeks.
We can do it in less and weoften do because the system's
ready, let's just push it out.
And a very small portion ofthat is training.
Right, we set aside a fewtraining sessions, but you're
absolutely right.
I mean, our goal is, whetheryou're nine years old or 90
(13:52):
years old, you can jump on thesystem, you can play around with
it and you get the hang of it.
From a user interface standpoint, we know that the ability for
somebody to just sort of hopinto, even like a sandbox, and
just sort of play around andlearn the system and that's
irreplaceable.
So that's what we work reallyhard on focusing on, and
especially on our Eagle view,which is what you probably went
(14:13):
up and played with, which islike the digital map of the yard
and it shows where all thetrailers are.
You can drag and drop them tocreate those jockey drivers,
shunter driver hoesler moves.
You can drag a live trailer togenerate a text message to a
driver who's already in that, inthat asset, and get them to
move that trailer.
So it's just there's somereally neat things there, but
it's intuitive and it's designedto be.
(14:35):
You know, just be able to pickup.
So I mean, I could sit down withyou, give you a training.
In three hours.
You would go from a very highlevel understanding of the
system.
Three hours later you'd be apro.
It's really that easy.
And generally our customers,when they come to us, one of the
things they're looking for isthat they don't want to have to.
You know especially.
Sure, go live is go live, butyou've also got retraining,
(14:58):
you've got new hires, you've gotpeople coming on later, right?
So the our ability to make itas intuitive as possible
directly correlates to how happyour customers are.
So that's what we prioritize.
Blythe Brumleve (15:09):
Seve any comments on that.
Severiano Carnera (15:11):
No, I totally agree.
You know, and that's one beautyof our solution, the YMS
solution, is that it is verysimple to use.
I have been a part of otherorganizations where the YMS
solution was not as intuitive ormade it too complicated for end
users.
This solution is verystreamlined, very easy to use
and I love the fact that it'sthat easy to use.
(15:33):
To Colin's point, a yard driverwe can train them in 15 minutes
on how to use their portion ofthe application.
So it just depends on the userbase, the individual user who
you're training.
It may take a few minutes to athree hour session, like Colin
was mentioning, to make someonea super user.
So it does make it thatstreamlined, very easy process.
Blythe Brumleve (15:56):
Are you in freight sales with a book of
business looking for a new home?
Or perhaps you're a freightagent in need of a better
partnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
our podcast interview seriescalled the Freight Agent
Trenches, sponsored by SPILogistics.
Now I can tell you all day thatSPI is one of the most
successful logistics firms inNorth America, who helps their
(16:17):
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
freight agents themselves.
And what better way to do thatthan by listening to the
experienced freight agents telltheir stories behind the how and
the why they joined SPI?
Hit the freight agent link inour show notes to listen to
(16:38):
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit SPI3PLcom.
One of the things too.
While I was at CSCMP and I wasat your booth I was working
through.
What does this mean for drivers?
Because drivers, one of theirbigger complaints is that they
arrive at a facility and thatthey're waiting around for hours
(17:01):
.
No one can give them any kindof directions and their time is
being wasted Any time they'renot running a load, that they're
not earning money.
So from my understanding isthat this kind of technology
helps them to avoid that extratime where they're just waiting
around, not earning money andnot doing anything.
Is that a safe assumption?
Yeah, what are you?
Colin Mansfield (17:23):
doing oh, you want to go to me?
Yeah, sure, yeah, no.
Basically, basically, how welook at it is look, everybody
wins If we can expedite thisprocess.
Everybody wins because ourcustomers are often coming to us
because they're payingoutrageous detention fees.
They're not able to turn thosetrailers around in time.
They're getting charged.
But just because a company'scharging another company
(17:46):
detention doesn't mean thatother company is happy, right,
they still, like you're saying,time is money.
They would rather meet all thatfacility, meet all the time
hacks, get that load turned, getit off the facility, get it
moving, and certainly the driverwould.
Who's sitting there?
So for us it's a matter of youknow, really everybody wins.
But we've had to think about itin terms of what does this mean
(18:07):
from a user experience, userinterface side.
What does this mean for ourcustomer?
But what does this mean for thedriver?
A good example of that is a lotof facilities have gates.
Right, they have folks that aresitting in the gate, 24, seven,
for a lot of operations.
There could be two of themthere, but the gates gets very
busy, but it's not always busy.
Right, there's down times.
(18:27):
You're still paying thoseemployees to sit there.
So what a lot of facilities arelooking at now is trying to
expedite that by removing theneed for personnel at the gate
and putting, for example, atouchscreen device like a kiosk
out there where a driver cancheck themselves in.
It could have a camera whereyou can scan a QR code for your
appointment.
It could be very simple andjust be a sort of a touch, a
touchscreen where you put inyour appointment number.
(18:48):
But either way, the result isthe same, which is that that
driver, instead of having towait, produce paperwork, do the
whole rigmarole back and forthat the gate, now there's a
backup and the driver 15 trucksbehind is getting frustrated.
Right, we can just expeditethat whole process, get folks
into the yard, get them moving,and so that, by the way, saves
that facility a ton of money aswell.
(19:09):
So again, it's an everythingeverybody wins scenario and
that's that's what we prioritize.
The other example that I gave ofthe live load you know some of
our customers are primarily dropload facilities.
Driver comes in leaves ortrailer leaves.
Some of them are primarily liveloads.
A lot of them are a mix, and sobeing able to handle those live
(19:30):
loads becomes very, verycritical from a facility
standpoint.
They get very frustrated if,for example, a driver comes in,
gets sent to a waiting areabecause their dock's not
available, and then, when thatdock is available, somebody from
the facility has to go knock onthat driver's doors.
Hey, go to this dock.
They don't have a walkie talkie, right, so it's a whole thing.
With our system, we can sendthat driver a text just letting
(19:52):
him know hey, your doc's nowavailable, it's time to move.
And even if that solves 50% ofthe issues with getting drivers
to the right docks, that's 50%savings in terms of that time
and that's great for these, forthese operations.
So we we think of it from both,from both perspectives, because
everybody needs to win for thisto be expedited.
Blythe Brumleve (20:14):
For sure there's too many silos right now
or not right now, buthistorically that have existed,
you know, within the industry,not just you know on this side,
but you know maritime intermodal, of course, as well.
I'm curious and Seve, I'll goto you for this one how do you
know, as a business, that you'reready for a YMS solution?
Severiano Carnera (20:34):
Sure.
So you know, typically we dohave demographics that will sort
of point you in the directionthat you need a YMS system.
You know, typically we'retalking and I've been a part of
some organizations that havevery, very large yards, which is
very easy to identify hey, youneed help with this.
But I've also seen someoperations that are much smaller
, let's say maybe 30 docks, 40parking spots, but they're
(20:57):
running a manufacturing process,for example, and it's very
important to obviously keepthose manufacturing lines up and
running.
So you identify things likethat out in the yard or when you
pay visits to these customersand you identify these things,
that these are really somepoints of improvement that you
could use so that you don't quit.
You know you don't stop youroperations.
(21:19):
But from baseline standpoint,there's a lot of things that go
into it, whether it be thenumber of yard trucks in use,
whether it be the number oftransactions per day coming in
and out of the facility, whetherit be you have reefers or not.
It's just a whole differentsmorgasbord of items that can be
included in there to determinethat.
But you know what, I don'tthink I've ever been to a site
(21:40):
that's not in need of a YMSsolution at some point in some
form or fashion, whether it be avery simple solution where
you're just taking appointments,for example, to understand what
may be coming in at given timesand what's leaving at certain
times, or it may be something assimple as just understanding
what inventory you have at thatpoint in time, so that you don't
have to go out there and dothose manual yard checks.
(22:01):
So, again, the gamut rangesfrom very small to very large
facilities.
But at the end of the day, Istill feel very strongly that a
lot of organizations need thesetypes of solutions and don't
realize it yet.
Blythe Brumleve (22:18):
OK, it's one of those.
It sounds almost like it's oneof those aha moments that happen
after you get the system andyou start seeing all of the
efficiency improvements and thenthat ultimately adds to ROI.
Colin, is that a safeassumption?
Colin Mansfield (22:31):
No, it absolutely is.
What I was going to say is justto add on because Seve is
absolutely right a lot oforganizations that come to us,
the sentence that I'm about tosay really resonates with them,
which is they've outgrown theircurrent manual systems, whatever
those are.
It could be at bolt-on to a WMSthat requires manual tracking,
(22:52):
it could be paper and pencil, itcould be anything in between,
but that feeling of like thisisn't working anymore.
Whatever system we're usingisn't working.
Generally, organizations don'tcome to us because they're doing
a bad job managing their yard.
Chances are they're doing avery, very good job, but they've
outgrown those manual systemsand it's becoming frustrating.
Most companies that come to usare growing.
(23:13):
They're adding capacity,they're adding yards or they
desire to grow, and they knowthey have the resources to make
that happen.
But they're not sure that whenthey grow they're going to be
able to track all of those newassets at their facility.
So I've never met a yard thatisn't doing their best.
Everybody's trying to do theirbest out there.
All we're doing is enhancingthat with additional tools.
Blythe Brumleve (23:37):
So what are those?
I guess so say a new customergets signed on, they get.
Within six weeks, they getactivated, everything is rolling
.
What are some of those early, Iguess ROI signals to them?
Is there a way to create thosekind of reports, or is it more
of just like a feel of a greaterefficiency while working within
(23:58):
the system?
What are some of those just ahamoments that your customers are
experiencing?
Colin Mansfield (24:04):
I'll share a few stories and then Seve if you
want to jump in and share otherinsights you've seen from a
broader perspective.
We had a customer who came tous because they were, for
example, opening up the backs oftrailers at night, shining
flashlights inside, to figureout what they were loading, what
they had loaded earlier in theday.
They were getting ready to shipout, and they go, oh crap, we
(24:24):
don't know what's what.
And they said it would be greatif you could just tell us what
was on each trailer.
And so for this customer thatwas like three employees every
night spending a couple hours.
What we figured out is if wecould implement a solution to
keep them from having to do this.
It'd save them about 50 grand ayear.
And so it was a very simplesolution.
We integrated with their WMS.
We did an API integration.
(24:45):
Their WMS sends whatinformation is getting loaded
onto a trailer in YMS.
When you hover your mousecursor over the trailer, it
tells you what's on it and youcan type into a search bar a
part number and it highlightsthat trailer on the screen.
It's that easy.
So things like that sometimesit's bespoke sort of ROI, for
customer has a specific problemand we do something to solve it.
(25:06):
A lot of customers suffer fromthe same types of issues, so
some of the broad ones.
Detention is a scourge.
A lot of organizations arepaying unnecessary detention
fees and it's really what itcomes down to is visibility.
If we can tell you what's aboutto go into detention, you can
prioritize that and get it movedright, get it loaded, get it
off the yard.
And so for us, a lot of timesthat's sending an alert, sending
(25:28):
an email, changing a trailer,make it right on the screen and
just letting you know hey, thisis an issue.
One of our customers, michelinMichelin Tire.
At one of their facilities theysaved $2.5 million in a single
year from unnecessary detention.
They were no longer payingAnother facility $450,000 in a
single year.
Now, those aren't commonnumbers, those are outliers,
(25:51):
right, but it shows you thepower of just visibility and
saying things.
Another big ROI piece that we'veseen is for those yard jockeys,
yard drivers, hustlers,whatever you want to call them
is being able to prioritize whatyou know routes, who's moving
what where and we've seen thisboth in terms of ROI, in terms
(26:12):
of efficiency, but also in termsof actually greenhouse gas
emissions.
If we can prioritize andprovide ideal routes for drivers
to take and they're able topick the best moves or be
presented with the best movesgiven their current location.
That's actually less fuelexpenditure.
So some larger organizationsthat are looking for ways to go
(26:32):
green are looking for theseinteresting opportunities that
are a little bit outside of thebox and allows them to say, hey
look, we are actuallyprioritizing this, not just in
the facility but outside thefacility as well.
So those are a couple areas,seve, if you want to add
anything on.
Severiano Carnera (26:49):
Yeah, and it's a great question, boy.
Typically I usually tellcustomers you're not going to
see any ROI until probably threemonths after using the system,
because then you've got the databehind it to go back and check
and verify certain activities.
So, whether it be the number ofyard moves that our drivers are
completing per hour or whetherit be making sure you manage
(27:10):
refit units, again those are bigcost savings that you see over
time.
One thing that I have workedwithin the past is refit units
are near and dear to my heartand I've worked with a lot of
protein organizations, meaningphysical livestock that comes in
on hooves and then leaves inpackages, so you can imagine how
(27:31):
much a trader worth of baconwould cost, for example.
And their big number one thingwas we cannot allow to have
spoilage occur out in the yardand lose one of those loads.
So, again, our ability to beable to manage that in and of
itself, the saving of one traderwould pay for the system on its
own.
So it doesn't typically happenthat quickly because obviously
(27:51):
we avoid those things, but thoseare types of scenarios, use
cases that they present us withthat they've come across in the
past as well.
Colin Mansfield (28:01):
I'll share another story with you real
quick, but that's it.
I'm sorry not to cut you off,but this is where.
Blythe Brumleve (28:06):
I love this one .
Colin Mansfield (28:07):
We were talking with the steel manufacturer.
They came to us because theyhad this problem and if they had
had a YMS they wouldn't havehad this problem.
Basically, they had two hundredand twenty thousand dollars
worth of finished product.
Hi, my wife coming in to giveme a croissant.
I love it.
Blythe Brumleve (28:26):
Nice, that's a good wife.
Colin Mansfield (28:28):
She is an amazing wife.
Hannah is amazing, we have.
So we had this company thatcame to us because they had two
hundred and twenty thousanddollars worth of finished
product.
They had gotten mixed up with ascrap trailer.
They sent the finished productto the scrap yard and you know
those are the types of servicefailure costs to seven point
that pays for the more than paysfor the system right and being
(28:50):
able to avoid.
Sometimes it's what can we save, what can we reduce something.
Sometimes it's what can wetotally avoid.
And every operation is a littledifferent.
Less than a year is very commonfor hitting ROI with our
customers To save a point mighttake three months to realize
that initially.
The next three months often iswhen they hit that ROI and
certainly by the end of the year.
Blythe Brumleve (29:11):
Yeah, it definitely.
It's starting to really makesense, you know, with avoiding
the spoilage on food by justsimple notifications, avoiding
detention fees by simplenotifications, just you know,
correcting or, I guess, closingthe communication gap between
the workers within your facility.
I'm curious as to, after youknow the, the software, is it
(29:33):
implemented or integrated intothe system?
What does that look like fromyou know?
Just, I guess an internalmanagement is someone you know
specifically looking at the,your YMS solution, you know,
throughout the day.
Is it integrated into theircurrent tech stack?
I imagine it's probablydifferent.
But is someone responsible fornow, you know, watching that
software or does it kind of justfit in to the current roles or
(29:57):
do you have to hire a new roleto manage the expectations
around?
You know, those differentnotifications and things like
that, if that question makessense.
Yeah it does make sense, yeah no, you don't.
Severiano Carnera (30:10):
That that's.
The beauty of this is that youreally don't need to hire
additional folks.
If anything, I usually tellcustomers, instead of having
folks, for example, answeringphone calls, answering or
responding to emails for anappointment, for example, you
can then move those personnel todo other things within your
yard.
So it's a matter of just movingpeople around and not focusing
(30:32):
on those daily mundane types oftasks of you know, responding to
emails, phone calls, things ofthat nature because, again, even
a simple appointment managementsolution which has included in
our solution, by the way takesaway some of that responsibility
and people can do that onlinenow versus having to do that
manually.
So there's a lot of differentthings like that.
You don't have to have someonemonitor the solution.
(30:54):
The system basically runsitself and then, based on your
role, you're just, you know,interacting with the solution to
get activities done.
So, for example, if I'm a docworker and I need a specific
trader to be brought to aspecific doctor, I can go out
into the system, identify thetrader that I need, create a
(31:15):
move request to have that tradermove to that door, and then
that move request gets sent tothe drivers and then they
complete that move.
So it's not as if someone hasto monitor the solution.
It just enhances what they'recurrently doing and it makes it
a much more easier process inthat again they don't have to
communicate with drivers overradio or things of that nature
Just streamlines thoseoperations much, much better.
Blythe Brumleve (31:39):
Yeah, that definitely makes a ton of sense
where your employees they canjust focus on things that
probably have a greater impactthan you know dealing with
communications back and forthand wasting a lot of time in
that regard.
One, a couple more questionsbased on that that.
You know the new warehousepodcast.
You know one thing I heard thatyou guys that I really liked is
(32:00):
that you are listening tocustomers and then making
additional features andintegrations into the platform
after listening to them.
What does sort of that processlook like?
Is it, you know, sort of theYMS solution is just you know
off the off the shelf and thenyou can make custom integrations
or solutions after that or someof these things more, I guess,
(32:21):
dependent on the company that'susing them.
Colin Mansfield (32:24):
Well, that's a great question.
Kind of both, actually, andthis really came out of a desire
to be.
We call ourselves, we're acustomer service company,
cleverly disguised as a yardmanagement company.
I think any good softwarecompany should be that right For
us.
You know, we started going tothe MHI trade shows Modex,
(32:45):
promat and we wanted to compete.
We said you know, they have abest IT innovation award.
We've got some cool stuff onour system.
What are we going to show off?
Well, we're going to show offwhat we've built for our
customers.
Right, every customer that comesto us has some, some variety of
either requirements orchallenges that they say I don't
(33:05):
care how you solve it, as longas you solve it right.
So what we do is we sit down,we have a discussion with them,
we figure out can current thingsin the system solve this and if
so, let's set those up.
And if not, we'll say, look, isthis something you'd like us to
add in?
And they go yeah, absolutelygreat.
And we go to these trade shows,we show off what we've built.
We've won awards.
You know, five years in a rowbeen recognized or been a
(33:27):
finalist or one best ITinnovation award, and it's it's
not waving a magic wand, it'snot like a pat on the back, it's
like we just listen to ourcustomers every year without
fail.
What we found is that there'sreally no such thing as a unique
problem.
It might feel unique to many ofthese operations, but often
several different types of ofoperations are suffering from
something similar, and so for us, if we can just prioritize
(33:50):
listening to customers gettinginto the system, that pays
dividends later on as well.
So, to directly answer yourquestion, sometimes that happens
early in that implementation,right, and they, they come to us
.
They say, look, we really needX, can you provide it?
And we say, look, it's not inthe system, but we can build it.
Sometimes that happens later on.
I say most often it happenslater on.
(34:11):
We go live.
For example, we've hadcustomers.
Very common for customers tocome to us and go let's
integrate with our you know GPSunits on owned assets in the
yard.
Let's integrate with ourtransportation management system
so that we can get appointmentsfed directly into YMS.
Let's integrate with the WMSsystem so we can get that cool
hover over a trailer.
See what's inside of it.
(34:31):
We call that X-ray vision that'sour marketing marketing term
for it and and so we'll treatthat as a phase two, as a phase
three after go live.
We support both, though we justwent live with a customer in
Atlanta.
Seve and I both flew down thereand hung out for better part of
a week on my end, and for themthey had some specific requests
(34:51):
with regards to reefer units.
Something that we added intothe system that we're making
available for all of ourcustomers is the ability to
track multiple zones of reeferunits.
You know, some reefer unitshave refrigerated in one part of
the trailer, frozen in anotherpart and you know, dry in
another part, and so the abilityto track all three of those,
(35:13):
for example, was critical forthis operation, and so we added
that in right, and we're alwayshappy to do that.
Blythe Brumleve (35:20):
Yeah, that sounds really cool.
And there was another featuretoo that I was reading on your
website, not just the you knowsaving costs you know a
potential spoilage on reefersbut also from loss prevention.
You know, with so much fraudgoing on within the industry,
how does the how does yoursolution, I guess, help with
(35:40):
other areas of loss prevention?
I assume maybe the steelexample.
Colin Mansfield (35:45):
Yeah, no, the steel example is a great one,
Knowing what's in the yard atany given time.
A lot of operations are doingcurrent inventory already.
Right, they're doing a yardcheck at least once a day,
probably more likely once ashift or twice a shift, to try
to get that inventory In oursystem.
You go to current inventoryreport, you hit Excel, it
downloads the inventory, you'redone.
So it keeps it really easy tosee what's on the yard now and
(36:08):
if you do that periodically youcan see what's on the yard now,
what wasn't on the yard before.
Run historical reports figureout where things went.
You know a lot of our customershave already gated facilities
so for them it's like, hey, wethought this trailer was here,
it was gated out.
Who gated it out?
When did it happen?
Who touched that trailer withour system?
They can go back and find that,whereas in the past maybe that
(36:30):
was a bit of a mystery All right.
Blythe Brumleve (36:33):
Well, I think.
I mean, obviously it soundslike this was one of those tools
that, like I said, I was at theconference and I walked by and
it struck me how easy to use thesoftware was, and so that was
my reasoning for reaching out toyou guys and now to hear so
much more about it in the lossprevention, I think is really
key.
Saving driver's time is alsoreally key.
(36:56):
And then also from the customerstandpoint, or the you know the
, just the warehouse itself,just being able to make your
operations much move, much moreefficiently.
Tough markets like this.
You got to be able to findthose edges and find those ways
to become more efficient andmore productive.
Seville, I'll go to you.
Last question Are there anyimportant features that you
(37:18):
think that we should havementioned that we haven't talked
about already?
Severiano Carnera (37:21):
Sure, sure.
So I'll mention some features,for example, for manufacturing
processes.
So when you have a manufacturingprocess, a lot of times those
manufacturing processes includehaving specific traders with
certain product come to the samedoors on a regular basis.
So I'll give you an example foran automotive industry, for
example, you may have three orfour doors where everything that
(37:42):
goes through those three orfour doors are always tires and
you don't want to shut down theproduction line.
So what you do is, once thattrader gets emptied and you know
that there's no more tires onthere, an automatic call to
remove that trader from thatdock door can be generated from
our solution and at that pointit will look into the inventory
(38:03):
in the yard, identify the nexttrader with tires in it and call
that trader to that dock door.
So instead of me sitting thereand entering those moves into
the system, the system canautomatically do that and move
these traders back and forth, sothat there's no human
intervention involved there andthe possibility of someone
making a mistake or forgettingto call the trader to that dock
(38:24):
door.
So that's just one example.
I've done that with automotives, with tubes of toothpaste, you
name it.
I've done it with manydifferent types of things from
the manufacturing standpoint.
So it's always important forthose types of operations to
make sure you streamline thosebasic functions, to make sure
you always have the rawmaterials at those dock doors in
(38:44):
order to keep that productionline moving.
Blythe Brumleve (38:48):
Yes, smart.
That's something I never eventhought of from that lens that
it would just make more sense tohave all of the tires unloaded
at once within one area of thewarehouse, versus, you know,
scattered all around and thenyou're scattering your team and
creates more inefficiencies.
Call it the same to youAnything that you feel is
important to mention that wehaven't already talked about.
Colin Mansfield (39:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think a good place to endthis is to just if you're in
operation and you're listeningto this, or you are in an
operation and you go.
Yeah, this sounds like we'reoutgrowing our manual processes.
This sounds like something thatcould benefit us.
You know there's severalsolutions out there that you can
take a look at, and wementioned the difference between
(39:32):
sort of like an add-on and abespoke or a specialty tool.
Within each of those, there'sconsiderations to make.
You know.
One of those is do you go witha system that includes sensors
or do you go with a system thatis process-driven?
Sensor-based systems are goingto be what Seve talked about at
the beginning, something thatuses like RFID tags, for example
, that you got to put on everytrailer, whereas a
(39:56):
process-driven system, like weprovide, is something that
doesn't require additionalhardware beyond maybe a tablet
you put inside of those jockeyvehicles.
Now you got to weigh pros andcons to each and every operation
has to make this call.
From an RFID standpoint, what alot of operations have to
consider is, if you don't ownyour own assets, you're going to
(40:16):
have to put those physicalsensors on every trailer that
enters or exits your yard, andif you forget to pull them off,
then you got to buy new ones.
Rfid sensors break.
Seve's worked for operationsthat have implemented RFID
solutions and so he can attestto this.
Maintenance is required.
You got to repurchase tags and,unfortunately, although some
(40:39):
really good sales reps may saythey're very accurate, they're
only accurate up to three tofive spots, which means a lot of
times.
If you really care about whatdoctrine or what spot is this
asset on, and you've got threeor four trailers stacked on top
of each other, how do youdifferentiate?
You do a yard check, which iswhat a lot of these operations
are doing now.
(40:59):
Anyhow, in our solution we can,like I said, get live in six
weeks, no additional hardware topurchase.
Employees do their jobs as theynormally would.
They have a tablet wherethey're tapping buttons on a
screen to indicate what's goingon.
We integrate with everysolution that's out there and
it's very, very easy to use.
So again, what I would say is doyour due diligence.
(41:20):
If you're an operation that'slooking for a YMS, you're not
going to make a bad choice.
It's better to have a YMS thanto not.
But as you're weighingdifferent options, look at not
only feature set and whether ornot there's hardware involved,
but also ask for references, Say, hey, who are some of your
customers who can give us somefeedback on your solution?
(41:41):
And, of course, anybody thatwants to reach out to us.
I'm happy to.
Our customers are our bestsalesman is what I always say.
I'm happy to provide you withthose references.
But it's a lot of fun.
Working in this industry is alot of fun.
The very last thing I'll say isit's really a pleasure working
with people in the yard space,people from all different
(42:03):
backgrounds, people with alldifferent skill sets, all
different knowledge levels andall different experience levels.
We did a training last, acouple of weeks ago now, where
there was somebody who had beenwith the company for 12 years,
for two years, for two monthsand for two days in that
training session and none ofthem knew anything about yard
management.
And so to sit down and say,look, we're going to bring a
(42:24):
whole new way of doing businessinto your yard, and to see the
excitement.
I mean that's why we do.
What we do right Is to not somuch help the companies.
That's great, but really, if Ican help an end user, whether
that's a person who's using oursystem or a driver coming onto
that facility.
Save time.
That's really what our job is.
Blythe Brumleve (42:41):
Yeah, and I would just to piggyback off of
your, your, your customersentiment.
One of the the I always ask yes, you know, to send in some
previous interviews you've doneor any kind of YouTube videos or
things like that, and one ofthe YouTube videos that you guys
sent over was just clips ofyour customers talking about the
money that they've saved, theproblems that you guys have
solved for them.
It was, you know, no fluff,just straight customer insight.
(43:04):
Um, so I thought that that wasum really good and um, one
couple quick final things um,where can folks follow more of
your work?
Um, and then also, can we get aglimpse of Seve's dog in the
background?
Colin Mansfield (43:16):
We should see the dog first.
Show us.
Blythe Brumleve (43:21):
Sitting nice to the fire, next to the fireplace
.
I think for a lot of folks thistime of the year you definitely
want to be right there to be adog.
Colin Mansfield (43:29):
You got to go make some hot cocoa and put it
right next to him.
Blythe Brumleve (43:33):
Put a little Santa hat on.
It is that time of the year nowto officially.
Colin Mansfield (43:37):
Oh, I know I know, oh my gosh, start the
Christmas music man.
Um yes, I, you can find us, yardmanagement solutionscom.
That's our website.
You can watch videos.
We got client testimonials.
We just added a uh, I think, acase study that you can check
out for one of our cold storagecustomers on there.
Uh, linkedin I'm on LinkedIn.
Colin Mansfield, seve Carnerais on LinkedIn as well.
(43:59):
Um, and you can find ourcompany on LinkedIn also.
Um, and then, finally, freightX represent, please advise,
freight X.
Find me on Twitter, colinMansfield.
Our company, yard managementsolutions, is on Twitter as well
.
X, formerly known as Twitter,whatever we're supposed to call
it.
Blythe Brumleve (44:15):
Just sounds so much better.
Well, guys, I appreciate theinsight today.
I appreciate you know that.
You know it's entertaining.
My, my fifth grade levelquestions learned a ton more
about you know YMS technology,um, today, and all of the
efficiencies that it creates andcost savings, loss prevention,
all that good stuff.
So this, this was a coollearning experience.
(44:37):
So appreciate your guys.
Time, um and uh, we'll makesure to put all those links in
the show notes to make it supereasy for folks.
But, um, unfortunately the dogis not included, or the
croissant is not included inthis broadcast.
Colin Mansfield (44:50):
Watch the video for those special features.
Blythe Brumleve (44:58):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of
everything is logistics, apodcast for the thinkers in it
Freight, telling the storiesbehind how your favorite stuff
and people get from point A to B.
Subscribe to the show, sign upfor our newsletter and follow
our socials over at everythingis logisticscom.
And in addition to the podcast,I also wanted to let y'all know
about another company I operateand that's digital dispatch,
(45:20):
where we help you build a betterwebsite.
Now, a lot of the times, wehand this task of building a new
website or refreshing a currentone off to a co-worker's child,
a neighbor down the street or astranger around the world,
where you probably spend moretime explaining the freight
industry than it takes toactually build the dang website.
Well, that doesn't happen atdigital dispatch.
(45:41):
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
social media posts, recruit newemployees and give potential
customers a glimpse into how youoperate your business.
Our new website builds start aslow as $1,500, along with
(46:02):
ongoing website management,maintenance and updates starting
at $90 a month, plus some bonus, freight marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on digitaldispatchio
.
Just check out the pricing pageonce you arrive and you can see
how we can build your digitalecosystem on a strong foundation
(46:25):
.
Until then, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
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