Door 2 · waiting 48 minDock doors
Trailers at each door, arrival to crew start, turn time
The blind spot
Warehouse systems rarely show why cost per unit went up.
The WMS counts units and orders and the labor system records punches, but neither records the forty minutes a trailer waited at the door before anyone touched it, or the hour a pack line stood staffed with no work arriving. Without that record, the usual response is more headcount or a new building.
Detention invoices give no cause
Carriers bill for time past free time, and the invoice doesn't show whether their late arrival or your late start caused it.
Idle labor is hidden in the labor report
On the labor report, a staffed station with nothing moving costs the same as a productive one.
Honeycombing hides free space
Half-empty positions make a building seem out of room well before it is.
What VideoBI measures
Every camera becomes a source of data.
An edge device on site reads the cameras and writes readings for the zones that matter. The video stays in the building.
Door 2 · waiting 48 min
Line 1 · no totes 14 minLines and stations
Stations staffed, units moving, staffed time with nothing moving
Yard 84% fullYard and gate
Trucks arriving and leaving, yard fill, gate to door time
Performance
Where measurement raises revenue and lowers costs.
Revenue up
Turn more trailers through the same doors
Arrival-to-crew and crew-to-release times per door show where dock capacity really goes.
Win and keep 3PL customers
SLA evidence per trailer and per order, with the timestamps to back it.
Take on volume without a new building
Measured slot occupancy and honeycombing show how much room the building really has.
Stop starving the lines
Replenishment gaps show up as staffed time with nothing moving, by line and hour.
Costs down
Cut detention you caused
Separate your late starts from carriers' late arrivals, trailer by trailer.
Reduce idle labor
Staffed time with nothing moving, priced at your loaded labor rate.
Lower labor cost per unit
See what moved cost per unit, step by step, and which building sets the standard.
Recover space before you lease more
Rent on half-empty positions in otherwise full aisles.
Every level of the organization
Dashboards for executives, managers and frontline teams.
Each role sees the same governed numbers, arranged for the decisions it makes.
Executives · Decide
What moved cost per unit, and the decisions worth making.
- A monthly close pack in dollars, building against building
- Recoverable dollars by cause: idle labor, detention, space
- Capital decisions backed by measured capacity
Managers · Operate
Where the shift lost time, and what to change tomorrow.
- Trailers waiting for a crew, by door and shift
- Lines staffed with nothing moving, and why
- Yard and staging filling up before they block the dock
Frontline · Act
What needs a crew now.
- Doors waiting for a crew, longest first
- Stations backing up and lines starved of work
- People at an open dock edge, flagged live
Ask
Questions answered from your cameras.
Ask VideoBI in plain language. It investigates across every site and answers with the numbers and the evidence behind them.
- “Why is our cost per unit up when volume is flat?”
- “Do we need a new building, or can we re-slot what we have?”
- “What's our real dock capacity at each building?”
- “Which building should set the standard for the others?”
We're paying a lot in detention. Is that the carriers' fault or ours?
Mostly ours: trailers wait for a crew at our doors, not for carriers in the yard. DC Columbus carried $218K of detention last quarter, with 3,868 trailers over free time. Starting every trailer within the 0.5 h target would have avoided $134K, $538K a year. The yard wait is short: a median 0.2 h.
A real answer from Ask in the live demo's sample network. How Ask works →
The return
What the system saves, and the decisions it informs.
Recoverable dollars are counted week by week and pay for the system. Decisions about capital, leases and operating models made with the same evidence affect results for years.
The arithmetic
In the live demo's sample network of three distribution centers
- $869K
- a year recoverable, from 31 days of what the cameras saw
- $547K
- a year from one decision: crewing one building's dock on second shift
- $1.6M
- a year if every building matched the best building's labor cost per unit
Recoverable dollars use the network's own rates: loaded labor rate, detention rate and rent per position.
The decisions
What the evidence changes
- A new building, or the one you haveMeasured slot occupancy and honeycombing before you sign a lease.
- Add dock doors, or start on timeDoor capacity measured trailer by trailer, before you pour concrete.
- Negotiate with carriersPer-trailer arrival, start and release times to settle detention charges.
- Set the labor model per buildingHeadcount set from measured flow, with the best building as the standard.
