Wave Planning
Overview
Maven allows LTL carriers the ability to plan in waves for their terminal operations. Wave Planning is defined as operations wanting to load trailers hours prior to a drivers coming on duty.
Reasons for needing to plan in waves.
- Dock pressures
- Dock is too small
- Spread out dock work
Wave Planning Operational Information
Maven has an Available Time field in the Inbound Shipment screen indicating inbound linehaul load status to the delivery terminal. tells the planner some powerful information.
Available Now – when a planner sees Available Now status in this field, they know the freight is physically sitting at the terminal.
Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) – when a planner sees an ETA time in this field, they know when this shipment is scheduled to arrive at the terminal. The planner can even see which terminal the inbound linehaul load is coming in from. This can be seen in the Current Terminal field.
Loading@Terminal – when a planner sees a status of LDG@DAL, they know that the linehaul truck is being loaded at Dallas Terminal (or whatever 3 alpha code is used for a terminal name), but the arrival into the planner’s terminal is unknown at this status.
Closed@Terminal – when a planner sees a status of CLS@DAL, they know that the linehaul truck is at the Dallas Terminal (or whatever 3 alpha code is used for a terminal name), and the trailer door has been closed, but the load has not started moving yet.
Over The Road (OTR) DAL – when a planner sees a status of OTR DAL, they know that the linehaul truck is driving to DAL terminal with an ETA date/time in the Linehaul ETA field. This could be a cross-dock facility or meet point indicating that the final destination terminal planner knows that it will have to be cross docked or swapped prior to making it to the final delivering terminal.
No Linehaul Status – when a planner sees no values in the Available Time field, they know this freight has just been picked up and is not currently on a linehaul to their terminal.
Wave Planning Configuration
The Available Time field works with Maven’s Wave Planning (A feature flag that can be turned on by Maven) configuration settings in the Create Optimized Routes from the Actions Menu (hamburger menu) from the planning and dispatch page.
Users can create the number of waves and the unique time of each wave by clicking on the “Plus” button. Planners then input the time of the wave based on the freight being available to the dock by the defined time.
Example:
Wave 1 @ 07:30 – this means freight that is available in the Inbound Shipment page with an Available Time of 07:30am or prior can be planned on Wave 1, Wave 2 or Wave 3 routes/drivers as configured in the Optimize Stops screen. However, freight with an Available time after 07:30am but prior to 08:30am can be planned on Wave 2 or Wave 3 routes/drivers as configured in the Optimize Stops screen. And finally, freight with an Available Time of prior to 10:00am but after 08:30am can only be planned on Wave 3 routes/drivers as configured in the Optimize Stops screen.
The wave with a green checkmark, is the default wave. This indicates freight with an unknown Arrival Time into the terminal and will be planned into the default wave.
A planner still must move a shipment to Ready to Plan in the Inbound Shipment page to be considered for Wave Planning. Maven will then apply the above logic to your route configuration in the Optimize Stops screen.