Keeping the shelves of the UK’s biggest supermarket chain stocked is a tough business – one requiring 58 million cases of products each week. Getting them off the delivery trucks safely is a key priority for Tesco, hence a two-year project with
ASSA ABLOY Group company Traka.
Customer
Tesco is a British grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England, United Kingdom.
Challenge
Tesco required a system to prevent delivery vehicles from being driven off unexpectedly, injuring or even killing distribution staff in the loading dock.
Solution
The system, developed in conjunction with Easilift, was trialed in 2009 at Tesco’s Hinckley depot – which receives deliveries from 300 to 400 vehicles each day.
Today, in a project spanning nearly two years, Traka Dock Door Management Solutions can be found in each of the 1163 goods-in dock doors across Tesco’s UK distribution network.
Traka’s system essentially eliminates human error, such as drivers misinterpreting cues and driving off before the door dock is closed. In simple terms:
- When they arrive at the dock door, drivers hand over their vehicle keys
- The keys are stored in a Traka intelligent cabinet, which then communicates the door is safe to open
- An authorized and trained operator uses an iFob with the correct permissions to open the dock door from within the warehouse
- When the dock door is closed and the iFob is returned to its control box, a signal is sent back to the intelligent cabinet
- Only then can the driver’s keys be removed and the vehicle driven away.
A real-time audit system details who enters the keys into intelligent cabinet and when, who operated the dock within the warehouse and when, and how long the unloading process took.