Worldwide Flight Services (WFS), a Member of the SATS Group, has begun rolling out a new dock management system in North America to reduce truck waiting times in New York JFK by more than 20%.
The solution is part of WFS’ in-house developed ePic Enterprise Solution, which is now operational at 52 WFS airport stations across the US. EPic offers a unified e-business platform that enables collaboration and simplified communication within the cargo community stakeholders: shippers, freight forwarders, truckers, airlines, ground handling agents, consignees, and regulatory bodies.
The new Dock Management System will be implemented across WFS’ major airport locations in North America over the next 12 months, with Atlanta, Miami, and Boston next in line to adopt the solution. Trucking companies, consignees, and forwarders will be able to create their own slot booking for cargo drop-off or recovery at WFS stations, ensuring better optimisation of truck yards and alleviating congestion.
Other features of the ePic platform include warehouse progress monitoring using live flight data from Flightaware to track arrival and departure information and the breakdown and build-up of cargo to meet customers’ service level agreements (SLAs);
iPads in WFS’ warehouse operations are also being connected to each weigh scale in its facilities to enter shipment weights automatically into the system, eliminating potential errors. The new solution has already been fitted to 60% of the scales in WFS’ cargo stations in the US;
In conjunction with airline partners, WFS is rolling out ICS2 integration and functionality to assist with compliance to the incoming EU Customs regulations.
Barcode reading applications have also been installed in ePic to support the RAFT Fully Automated Pallet Storage System, initially at New York JFK. This helps the system to quickly and accurately read and inventory cargo for input from the warehouse and dispersal to delivery agents.
WFS vice president cargo for North America, Shawnpaul Booth said: “For WFS in North America, ePic is ahead of other handling software because it is constantly evolving based on expertise from the field. We have a process to continually look at requests from within our business, which can come from Warehouse Supervisors or Office Agents, and we prioritize them. The improvements we make are driven by users. The fact that ePic is designed to be quite a simple system, means building APIs is very quick and easy, which is leading airline customers to ask us to implement it within their own locations because they see the efficiencies where we work with them.”
EPic allows WFS to use a single system to handle multiple airline customers in multiple facilities using one centralised solution, simplifying operational processes, training requirements, and maximizing efficiency.