Your buffers are band-aids: Exploring the hidden costs of in-yard vehicle buffers
Tour a typical automotive assembly plant, and you’ll see a lot—they’re vast, complex, and genuinely impressive. But there’s one thing you won’t see very much of: lineside inventory.
Not so many years ago, you certainly would have seen plenty of lineside inventory. Piles of it actually, held as a precautionary buffer against line stops and supply interruptions. With even more of it piled up in lineside stores and nearby warehouses.
No longer, though: today, Just-in-Time and Lean Manufacturing have educated management in the costs—and wastes—of carrying excess work-in-progress.
Of course, post-pandemic supply shortages mean that a little of the gloss may have gone off Lean Manufacturing as an aspiration in the pre-assembly inbound component supply chain—at least as far as overseas-sourced supplies are concerned. But in the assembly plant, the principles of Just-in-Time and Lean remain inviolable: pre-assembly inventory is bad, period.
Buffers abound in vehicle yards
Yet something weird happens once assembled vehicles leave the plant and enter the post-manufacture finished goods supply chain. All those worthy aforementioned principles get thrown out of the window. Just-in-Time? Lean? Forget it.
In vehicle yards, inventory buffers are everywhere.
You see buffers of vehicles waiting to be loaded onto transporter trucks. You see buffers of vehicles waiting to be loaded onto trains. You see buffers of vehicles awaiting accessorization, customization, or repair.
In short, there are buffers at pretty much any operation except simple storage.
Transport delay expenses add up quickly
And it’s not difficult to see the attraction of those buffers.
When yard operators keep a transporter truck waiting while they hunt for those last few elusive vehicles, they pay a detention charge–an expensive one in many cases. Keep a train waiting while vehicles are located, and it’s the same. Maintaining buffers of vehicles helps to avoid those costly charges.
And the technicians who work in accessorization, customization, and repair
are too expensive to have standing around idle while vehicles are located. Buffers of vehicles waiting to be worked on help to ensure that workstations keep busy.
Frequently, there’s another buffer after the workstation, too—so that vehicles can leave the workstation as quickly as possible and not be held up waiting for a driver to take the vehicle away.
Where buffers cost you
Yet all those buffers are expensive, too.
Vehicles have to be moved twice—once from their storage space to the buffer, and again from the buffer to the workstation. And when there’s a buffer after the workstation, the same double movement occurs.
The result: expensive workshop technicians being paid simply to move vehicles—first, from the inbound buffer to the workstation, and again from the workstation to the outbound buffer.
There’s additional strain on vehicles in the form of fuel consumption and battery discharge. And, because there are twice as many vehicle movements taking place, there’s a greater probability of accidental damage.
Plus, of course, all those buffers take up space—space that yard operators could use more profitably for long-term vehicle storage, not short-term buffering.
All in all, yard operators can be forgiven for thinking that there has to be a better way.
The Solution: Real-Time Vehicle Visibility and Intelligence
At Cognosos, we have developed an advanced real-time vehicle visibility solution. A location solution that delivers accurate vehicle location, taking drivers to their assigned vehicle is stored in all weathers, 24 hours a day, and with total reliability.
How? Through the use of low-cost wireless-equipped GPS-enabled tracker tags, hung from vehicles’ rear-view mirrors, which transmit vehicles’ location over a radio frequency network with gateway antennas that can be up to two miles away.
The exact location of a vehicle is always known, and when a vehicle is moved, an onboard accelerometer inside the tag automatically triggers the tag to upload the vehicle’s new location whenever it comes to rest.
So, if you know where every car is, you can always move it to where it’s needed exactly when it’s needed – no need to stash it nearby ahead of time just in case it takes a while to find it.
Beyond that, knowing exact vehicle location gives you total certainty that when an assigned driver goes to collect an assigned vehicle, that vehicle is going to be where it is expected to be.
Now, vehicle buffers can shrink to just one or two vehicles, or even be eliminated entirely. Thereby eliminating unnecessary vehicle movements, unwanted strain on vehicles’ batteries, wasted driver time, and the need to assign longer-term storage space for use as short-term buffering.
If you want to learn more about how real-time vehicle visibility can support advanced tracking for finished vehicle logistics, download our guide, The Alignment Advantage: How to Improve FVL Efficiency and Profitability.
