Site Management System Looks After The World's Biggest Dairy

When global dairy company Arla Foods was preparing to open a new £150 million dairy in Aylesbury, England, they knew they would need a Yard Management System (YMS) which could keep track of the flow of vehicles throughout the yard on a 24/7, 365-day basis. With 150 vehicles unloading raw milk every day, it was essential that Arla’s managers had a system which could help them manage the yard operations as efficiently as possible.

By enabling them to quickly check in trailers, assign them to parking bays, prioritise loading and unloading, and assign lorries to new trailers, the YMS would play a critical role in the company’s productivity and cost savings.   
 
Arla aims for best in class quality and operating costs, which they achieve by adopting best practices in emerging technologies and end-to-end supply chain planning and scheduling. Sourcing their bespoke Yard Management System was no different – and Arla knew that they could count on Blueberry to deliver.

Using our own BBWT web application framework, which helped accelerate development and keep costs down, Blueberry built a sophisticated, flexible system that:

• Enables Arla’s managers to control all of the movements around the yard easily and effectively.
• Includes a yard map which provides a graphical view of the location of all vehicles, bay assignments and a ‘drag and drop’ function that tells the drivers where to move a vehicle to.
• Utilises mobile devices which drivers receive on check-in to receive instructions from the yard controllers.
• Helps the yard controllers manage driver and trailer resources to ensure the site does not exceed noise restrictions

Since the Yard Management System went live, it has helped significantly reduce the time needed to allocate vehicles to bays and minimize unnecessary vehicle movements. It has enabled Arla to have complete visibility and control of their assets to effectively and efficiently manage the operations of the largest dairy in the world.