Problem:
Your supervisor has assigned you to study Canbide's Denver location. This location handles an average of 52.7 trucks per day. On Tuesdays and Fridays, the count is usually over 75 trucks. About half of the shipments are set-up by Denver operations, which has the ability to reschedule/adjust product pick-up times with a four-hour notice to the designated carrier. The remaining shipments are set-up by the customer either using their own or contracted equipment. These vehicles often just show up at the gate, sometimes with an unanticipated purchase order in hand.
Canbide's current contracts with their carriers allow drivers to wait up to 1 hour at any single loading facility without incurring demurrage. Canbide claims to achieve a 90% success in maintaining a 2-hour gate-to-gate service time with no truck spending more than 4 hours gate-to-gate. If customer owned trucks are made to wait, then "goodwill" suffers.
Regardless of whether the truck is scheduled by Canbide or contracted by customer, all trucks have to transit throughout the plant to pick-up their full complement of items. Sometimes, truck drivers will get impatient and "balk" to another, hopefully less busy, loading facility. This, of course, adds unnecessary traffic to through the plant, aggravating the union safety committee.
Develop a presentation for your manager listing the changes/improvements you would recommend to plant, divisional, and corporate management regarding the Denver location. How would prioritize their needs? Be sure to include the customer service/competitive advantage aspects.