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Cross-Dock Door Planner
Plan your dock at shift-start: map which inbound trailers feed which outbound routes, ordered by cutoff so the tightest connections surface first. Seed from a WMS export or paste, then export the plan for the floor lead to run Live Triage against. Everything stays in your browser.
Seed the board with a CSV upload or paste to begin. Routes appear on the right, ordered by cutoff.
What this calculator does
This planner maps which inbound trailers feed which outbound routes at the start of a shift, and orders the routes by cutoff time so the tightest connections show first. Cross-docking moves freight from inbound to outbound doors with little or no storage, so the plan is mostly a question of timing.
Inputs that matter
- Seed the board from a CSV upload or from rows pasted from a spreadsheet. Columns are matched by name: inbound trailer, outbound route and volume, and optionally inbound door, outbound door, arrival time, cutoff time, destination and trailer capacity.
- Choose the unit (pallets or cartons), the unload rate in units per minute (2 by default) and a tight buffer in minutes (30 by default). Volume is the number of units on each link between an inbound trailer and an outbound route.
How it works
Each outbound route's volume is the sum of every link into it. Work time is that volume divided by the unload rate.
When a route has a cutoff and its feeding trailers have arrival times, slack is the cutoff minus the latest feeding arrival minus the work time. Negative slack means the route will miss its cutoff. Slack below the buffer is flagged tight, and anything else is ok.
Without times, the planner works from volume alone and flags a route as tight when its work time exceeds the buffer. Routes are sorted by cutoff, earliest first, with routes that have no cutoff last. That ordering puts the earliest cutoffs at the top of the board, where the tightest connections tend to show first.
The plan is saved in your browser's local storage and can be exported as a JSON file. The Cross-Dock Exception Triage tool loads it on the same device, or you can import the file there.
Frequently asked questions
- How does the planner decide a route is at risk?
- It computes slack: the route's cutoff minus the latest arrival among its feeding trailers minus the time needed to work the volume. Negative slack is flagged as past cutoff, slack under your buffer is tight, and the rest is ok.
- What does my spreadsheet need to look like?
- One row per inbound-to-outbound link, with a header row. The tool recognizes common column names for inbound trailer, outbound route and volume, and optionally doors, arrival, cutoff, destination and capacity, so a WMS export often loads without editing.
- Is my plan uploaded anywhere?
- No. The plan is built and stored in your browser, using local storage on your device, and you can export it as a JSON file to move it elsewhere.