YardLytix
Reduce door dwell and improve trailer turns with camera+OCR and a live yard map.
YardLytix is dock and yard analytics that reads plates and container numbers at the gate, keeps a live map of every trailer and slot, and alerts the yard before a dwell limit becomes a detention invoice.
Who is this for?
Distribution center and yard managers at sites with dozens of doors and carriers, manufacturing plants on just-in-time windows, cross-dock operators and 3PLs who run detention chargebacks for several clients. It needs gate cameras and a TMS or YMS. It does not need GPS units on trailers or cooperation from third-party drivers.
What problem does it solve?
The trailer at door 14 has been there two hours because the slot record was never updated, and nobody will know until the carrier's detention invoice arrives three weeks later with no evidence either way. Yard moves happen by radio and memory, and the yard map, if there is one, is a whiteboard.
Production-critical trailers get the same treatment as the rest, so the line waits on a part that is sitting in the yard. And the utilisation report, when someone builds it, is a reconstruction from paper check-in sheets.
How does it work?
4K cameras at entry and exit read container IDs, trailer numbers and license plates in under 500 milliseconds, at 98 percent or better on clean plates and 92 to 95 percent on dirty ones, with multi-frame averaging and confidence scoring; low-confidence reads go to manual verification rather than into the record. Every movement is logged with a timestamp, driver ID and bay assignment, which is the event timeline that settles a dispute.
The live yard map shows every trailer position with slot status (available, occupied, overstayed) and dwell heatmaps that reveal the bottlenecks. Thresholds by carrier, priority and load type raise alerts to yard ops by SMS, email or the TMS dashboard before a dwell limit is breached, and production-critical trailers can be flagged ahead of the queue.
Appointments, yard moves and carrier updates sync both ways with Oracle TMS, Blue Yonder, Manhattan and SAP TM. Turn times, dwell and utilisation are reported from the record rather than reconstructed from it.
Capabilities
- Gate OCR (plates/containers) & event timeline
- Yard map with slot status & heatmaps
- SLA breach alerts to ops
- TMS/YMS integration (SAP TM, Blue Yonder, Oracle TMS)
- Real-time trailer location tracking
Outcomes
- Dwell Time Reduction ↓ 15-30%
- Faster Trailer Turns ↑ 2x
- Annual Detention Savings ↑ $50K+
What does it connect to?
- TMS and YMS: SAP TM, Blue Yonder, Oracle TMS and Manhattan through pre-built connectors, two-way
- Standard HD and 4K IP cameras with RTSP or ONVIF, including existing gate cameras
- Alerts by SMS, email or the TMS dashboard
- Customer and detention reporting for multi-client yards
How is it deployed, and how long does it take?
Camera-based tracking and slot sensors, with no hardware on the trailer. A site survey sets camera placement for OCR accuracy, which depends on angle and lighting at your gate; that is why the accuracy is gated per site rather than quoted once for every building.
Multi-client yards get client-specific dwell rules and detention cost tracking; manufacturing sites get dock scheduling integration and priority alerts for the trailers the line is waiting for.
Measurable dwell reduction within 6 to 8 weeks of the pilot, full return within 90 days as it scales across gates. Dwell typically falls 15 to 30 percent and trailer turns roughly double.
Industry context
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