An empty bay looks like progress. It often is not. I watch plants celebrate a free door while the load for that slot is still scattered across the warehouse. The appointment is booked. The haulier is en route. The product is not in bay order, not axle-checked, and not sequenced
The system said go. The screen was green. Then someone still walked the yard. I see that walk every week in packaging plants. Not because people distrust software for fun. Because the plan on the screen and the trailer on the bay are not the same thing yet. What the
Tomorrow's outbound plan often dies on today's returns bay. A few pallets come back. A short of board needs rework. Someone parks it on a good trailer because that is the only open deck in sight. By morning the vehicle you needed for a customer window
Most route tools start with miles. I start with clusters. If you route before you group the work, you optimise a mess. Packaging plants ship mixed SKUs to many sites in short windows. The useful first move is to cluster what belongs together on the same run. Then you route
I have sat in enough software demos to know the difference between a board that talks about packaging and a team that has stood on a plant floor. The tools that stick in this industry are usually built by people who have lived the dock, the yard, and the awkward
Same demand does not have to mean the same number of vehicles. That sentence is easy to say and easy to abuse, so I will keep it illustrative. I am not claiming a fixed percentage for every plant. Plants differ. SKU mix differs. Lane length differs. What I am saying
Most packaging plants still talk about miles when they talk about CO₂. Miles matter. They are not the whole story. Weight on the axle is where a lot of the carbon hides. Push too much onto one axle group and you burn more fuel for the same distance. Leave the
Most of the cost on a packaging dock does not arrive as one dramatic failure. It arrives as tiny slip-ups that feel normal. A bay left half empty because two SKUs did not look like they would fit. A multi-drop loaded in the wrong order so the first stop is
Production says the order can ship. The trailer is not ready. That gap is where a lot of packaging days come apart. The line finished. Labels are on. The ERP shows stock available. On the yard there is no trailer booked, or the one that arrived is the wrong type,
Last-on, first-off sounds obvious until you watch a multi-drop leave the yard in the wrong order. The first stop is buried behind later drops. The driver restacks at the kerb. Or the trailer comes back to the dock. Either way, the sequence was the plan, and the plan was wrong.
Your ERP already knows what is going where. Sales orders, pick lists, ship dates, customer sites. That layer is solid for most packaging plants I visit. It still cannot load the dock. Knowing the order book is not the same as building an axle-legal trailer, clustering multi-drops, or deciding which
Walk most packaging yards and you will still find the spreadsheet after the ERP. The ERP holds the orders. The sheet holds the truth the dock actually uses. Who is on which trailer. Which drops share a run. What got bumped when production slipped an hour. That sheet is where
Transport planning
Mileage is a result. Constraints come first. The shortest route on the map is often the one that never leaves the yard.
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Why “knowing the industry” matters more than ever In packaging and logistics, every extra mile on a truck costs money, carbon and customer goodwill. The old way—spreadsheets, guesswork and generic SaaS tools—leaves too many variables to chance. KickSix proves that real innovation starts with people who live the
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Why “Cluster‑Your‑Orders” Is the New Money‑Saving Engine for Shippers Imagine you have ten small parcels headed to three nearby towns. Instead of sending a separate truck for each stop, you bundle those orders into one route, load them together and let the driver follow an optimized path.
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The hidden cost of “silos” In many packaging plants, transport planning lives in its own spreadsheet while production runs on an ERP and the warehouse runs a WMS. When these systems don’t talk to each other you get: * Empty‑truck miles – trucks leave half‑full because the loading plan
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*Target audience: transport planners & fleet managers* 📦 The Myth of “Cubing” Every seasoned loader knows the phrase “fill the cube.” It’s tempting to think that maximizing volume alone guarantees a profitable haul. In reality, cubing is only half the battle. A container or trailer may be packed to the
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When the ERP Says *Ship*, but No One Knows *How* 📦 Your MIS/ERP can tell you that 10 000 units of product X must leave the plant today. That’s great – the system has consolidated demand, inventory and production plans into a single number. The problem starts the moment that
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The Spreadsheet Trap Most logistics teams still rely on Excel sheets, email threads and gut‑feel to decide how many pallets fit into a trailer. It feels cheap – until the numbers don’t add up. * 🧮 Human error: One misplaced decimal or an outdated SKU dimension can turn a perfectly packed
With Clockwork by KickSix, packaging manufacturers achieve: ✅ Up to 20% higher trailer fill rates ✅ Reduced CO₂ emissions through efficient routing ✅ Lower transport costs by aligning production, warehousing & delivery ✅ Happier customers thanks to reliable on-time deliveries It’s about turning complexity into clarity and cost into value. 👉 Ready to see
KickSix has developed Clockwork, built specifically for packaging manufacturers. We’re helping the industry cut costs, reduce CO₂, and improve delivery performance. 👉 Want to see it in action? Book a demo today. #KickSix #Clockwork #TransportPlanning #SupplyChainEfficiency #PackagingLogistics #Demo
At KickSix, we know that transport planning shouldn’t be a guessing game. That’s why we built Clockwork designed to bring structure, clarity and automation into one of the least digitised processes in packaging. Here’s how it works: 1️⃣ Links MES, Warehouse & ERP – integrating the systems that
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Manual spreadsheets and reactive planning belong in the past. With Clockwork, packaging manufacturers can: ✅ Automate complex transport planning ✅ Optimise loads in real time ✅ Align logistics with production and sustainability goals The result? A smarter, greener, more connected supply chain. #KickSix #Clockwork #FutureOfLogistics #SmartLogistics #Innovation #PackagingIndustry
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Our customers see: 📦 +20% trailer utilisation ⏱️ Faster planning cycles 💰 Reduced transport costs 🌍 Lower emissions Clockwork doesn’t just make logistics smarter — it pays for itself. #KickSix #Clockwork #TransportROI #SupplyChainEfficiency #PackagingLogistics #SmartLogistics