Zebra's Industry Solutions can give your business a competitive advantage by connecting people, assets and data to help you make better decisions.
Scale and energize your retail strategy with a digital backbone that unifies your team, informs priorities and drives results with Zebra's retail technology solutions.
Zebra’s mobile computing, scanning, and printing solutions connect each operational area in your warehouse to give you the agility to realize transformational gains.
Zebra's healthcare technology solutions provide patient identity management, mobile health devices, and business intelligence data to improve efficiency.
Zebra’s manufacturing technology solutions enable manufacturers to become more agile, optimize plant floor performance and embrace market changes.
Zebra's market-leading solutions and products improve customer satisfaction with a lower cost per interaction by keeping service representatives connected with colleagues, customers, management and the tools they use to satisfy customers across the supply chain.
In today's world, the demands on transportation and logistics companies are higher than ever. Dedicated Warehouse, Fleet and Delivery, and Yard and Terminal solutions enable visibility to every aspect of your business and keep operations running flawlessly around the clock.
Zebra's hospitality technology solutions equip your hotel and restaurant staff to deliver superior customer and guest service through inventory tracking and more.
Empower your field workers with purpose-driven mobile technology solutions to help them capture and share critical data in any environment.
Learn how Zebra's public sector technology solutions empower state and local governments to improve efficiency with asset tracking and data capture devices.
Zebra's range of Banking technology solutions enables banks to minimize costs and to increase revenue throughout their branch network. Learn more.
Zebra's range of mobile computers equip your workforce with the devices they need from handhelds and tablets to wearables and vehicle-mounted computers.
Zebra's desktop, mobile, industrial, and portable printers for barcode labels, receipts, RFID tags and cards give you smarter ways to track and manage assets.
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Zebra's extensive range of RAIN RFID readers, antennas, and printers give you consistent and accurate tracking.
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Zebra's rugged tablets and 2-in-1 laptops are thin and lightweight, yet rugged to work wherever you do on familiar and easy-to-use Windows or Android OS.
With Zebra's family of fixed industrial scanners and machine vision technologies, you can tailor your solutions to your environment and applications.
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Zebra's OEM scan engines, imagers, and private label OEM products offer flexible integration and help enhance product development with modern OEM technology.
Zebra's environmental sensors monitor temperature-sensitive products, offering data insights on environmental conditions across industry applications.
Keep labor costs low, your talent happy and your organization compliant. Create an agile operation that can navigate unexpected schedule changes and customer demand to drive sales, satisfy customers and improve your bottom line.
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Drive down costs while driving up employee, security, and network performance with software designed to enhance Zebra's wireless infrastructure and mobile solutions.
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Make the most of every stage of your scanning journey from deployment to optimization. Zebra's barcode scanner software lets you keep devices current and adapt them to your business needs for a stronger ROI across the full lifecycle.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
Zebra DNA is the industry’s broadest suite of enterprise software that delivers an ideal experience for all during the entire lifetime of every Zebra device.
Advance your digital transformation and execute your strategic plans with the help of the right location and tracking technology.
Boost warehouse and manufacturing operations with Symmetry, an AMR software for fleet management of Autonomous Mobile Robots and streamlined automation workflows.
The Zebra Aurora suite of machine vision software enables users to solve their track-and-trace, vision inspection and industrial automation needs.
Zebra Aurora Focus brings a new level of simplicity to controlling enterprise-wide manufacturing and logistics automation solutions. With this powerful interface, it’s easy to set up, deploy and run Zebra’s Fixed Industrial Scanners and Machine Vision Smart Cameras, eliminating the need for different tools and reducing training and deployment time.
Aurora Imaging Library™, formerly Matrox Imaging Library, machine-vision software development kit (SDK) has a deep collection of tools for image capture, processing, analysis, annotation, display, and archiving. Code-level customization starts here.
Aurora Design Assistant™, formerly Matrox Design Assistant, integrated development environment (IDE) is a flowchart-based platform for building machine vision applications, with templates to speed up development and bring solutions online quicker.
Designed for experienced programmers proficient in vision applications, Aurora Vision Library provides the same sophisticated functionality as our Aurora Vision Studio software but presented in programming language.
Aurora Vision Studio, an image processing software for machine & computer vision engineers, allows quick creation, integration & monitoring of powerful OEM vision applications.
Adding innovative tech is critical to your success, but it can be complex and disruptive. Professional Services help you accelerate adoption, and maximize productivity without affecting your workflows, business processes and finances.
Zebra's Managed Service delivers worry-free device management to ensure ultimate uptime for your Zebra Mobile Computers and Printers via dedicated experts.
Find ways you can contact Zebra Technologies’ Support, including Email and Chat, ask a technical question or initiate a Repair Request.
Zebra's Circular Economy Program helps you manage today’s challenges and plan for tomorrow with smart solutions that are good for your budget and the environment.
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Zebra has a wide variety of courses to train you and your staff, ranging from scheduled sessions to remote offerings as well as custom tailored to your specific needs.
Build your reputation with Zebra's certification offerings. Zebra offers a variety of options that can help you progress your career path forward.
Build your reputation with Zebra's certification offerings. Zebra offers a variety of options that can help you progress your career path forward.
What Is Cross Docking?
Cross Docking: What Is It?
Cross docking optimizes transportation costs and warehousing costs of goods in the supply chain, by removing the need for storage to hold inventory in between transits. Cross docking normally occurs in a distribution docking terminal or a cross dock facility. Typically, full inbound trucks carrying one type of cargo arrive at one side of the cross dock, and full outbound trucks with mixed cargo leave from the other side. Cross docking allows for transport efficiency, where a delivery of a full truckload of a single item to a single location is not needed or wanted.
For example, if you are a retailer with a cross-dock operation, you can receive a full truckload from a supplier (e.g., shampoo), sort it in the cross-dock, and combine items from multiple inbound trucks. Then, you can send a full truckload with mixed items to your stores, reducing the need for multiple deliveries. This streamlines inventory management, saving time.
The LTL (Less-Than-Truckload) freight carriers industry relies heavily on cross-docking. In this model, a truck is loaded with pallets of items at one location, each bound for different destinations. As a crucial component of the transportation and logistics sector, LTL specializes in transporting smaller shipments that don't need a full truckload. Instead of dedicating a truck to a single shipment, LTL carriers consolidate multiple shipments from various shippers into one truck. This efficient method, often facilitated by cross-docking, ensures that goods reach multiple delivery points effectively. Cross docking helps minimize the need for long-term storage of goods. In this process, incoming shipments from different suppliers are temporarily unloaded at a cross docking terminal or distribution center. Instead of being stored, the products are quickly sorted and then reloaded onto outbound trucks for delivery to their respective destinations, helping to streamline the supply chain and reduce handling and storage costs.
What Is an Example of a Cross Docking Operation?
To visualize a cross docking operation, imagine a hallway-like setup with numerous doors on either side. In a distribution center, you will have delivery trucks on one side of the center that arrive with items manufactured by various manufacturing companies, and on the other side, you will have mixed loads with workers filling up multiple pallets from the various inbound trucks. There could be numerous cross docking operations happening simultaneously.
A real-life example of a cross docking operation is where various retailers are receiving goods from a manufacturer that is required to be distributed across multiple stores across a national network. The manufacturer will first move this into the first cross dock at its distribution center or warehouse where it is being separated out to be delivered to the distribution centers of different retailers.
When the goods arrive at the retailers' own distribution centers, they will have another cross dock operation in order to fill trucks to deliver the goods to the various retail stores. Think of this as an old-fashioned organizational chart that starts from the top and gradually fans out as the grid gets bigger.
This process efficiently uses warehouse space to ensure that goods are stored and moved in an organized and efficient manner.
Companies offering cross docking services play a crucial role in ensuring the efficient transfer and distribution of goods. These services help streamline the supply chain, reduce storage costs, and speed up delivery times by minimizing the need for warehousing and handling.
What Are the Advantages of Cross Docking?
The main advantages of a cross docking implementation are the cost savings and efficiencies that it can provide to manufacturers, retailers, and logistics providers.
If there are immediate needs for a particular good, as soon as it hits the receiving dock, if the business has a system that can recognize the goods, it can use the cross docking process to move those goods directly to shipping and ship out to a customer.
Cross docking is being used across multiple industries and e-commerce leaders are continuously innovating strategies to trim time and distance to the consumer, such as drop shipping and pushing inventory to stocking locations where they have forecasted demand.
Rapid, efficient cross docking ensures inventory flows rapidly, reducing storage costs and improving delivery times. Cross docks are a key component of an efficient supply chain operation, minimizing the need for extended inventory storage and thereby streamlining the entire process.
An effective cross docking solution has numerous benefits:
- Increases productivity — the same staff can now cross dock and ship more orders per day.
- Improves shipping times for higher customer satisfaction.
- Improves utilization of material handling equipment .
- Improves vehicle utilization — trucks are fully loaded with the right shipments and shipments are aggregated to minimize mileage.
- More environmentally friendly — By consolidating shipments, reducing warehousing needs, and minimizing transportation distances, cross docking can also help businesses reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to environmental sustainability.
- Reduces handling — Since products are not being stored and picked from the warehouse, there's less chance of product damage. Fewer touches can also mean fewer chances for errors.
- Allows for greater flexibility — Cross docking can accommodate a variety of product types and customer requirements, offering greater flexibility in handling complex supply chain needs.
Explore Zebra’s Cross Docking Solutions
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