c3 yard®
Yard management FAQ
Access & Technology
C3 Yard is only available as a Software-as-a-Service solution (SaaS). It is hosted in a secure, high-availability data center. C3 is accessible by all users via a web browser and the the dedicated C3 Hub mobile application for shunters and dock supervisors .
C3 Yard’s Progressive Web Application allows gate, warehouse and yard personnel to access all relevant C3 Yard functionality on a mobile device. This means that warehouse personnel can easily capture timestamps related to arrival, on dock and departure times. In addition, load exceptions (faults) can be easily documented with the mobile device’s internal camera in real-time.
Yard drivers can get rid of their radios and notepads. With C3 Yard, they receive clear instructions on a mobile touch-screen device. Using business rules and priority levels set up by yard controllers, C3 Yard constantly analyzes the pool of work in order to assign drivers the most optimal tasks.
The C3 Progressive Web Application is compatible with ANY mobile device.
Yes, since C3 Yard is a web based application, you just need a computer or mobile device with internet access.
Technology
C3 supports three different means of receiving and sending information:
– Web Services
– XML file transfers to SFTP
– Flat file transfers to SFTP
For customers that require a dynamic and seamless integration with C3 Yard, C3 recommends its Web Services interface
C3 Yard uses inbound web services to receive information from external systems. If a customer is not able to work directly with our web service’s APIs, C3 is able to receive a flat file and build a custom translator to our web service.
Yes, Yard provides outbound integration to external systems via web services and SFTP file transfers.
C3 Yard APIs available for Web service(s) is exhaustive. It includes inbound and outbound Web service(s) calls. Inbound APIs can include purchase order data for the purpose of validating scheduling appointments. Inbound APIs could also be appointment data from a transportation system or vehicle data. Outbound APIs can include information on the scheduled appointments, dock activity, vehicle data, gate transactions, etc.
Security
Yes, when users are created, they can be associated to one or multiple sites.
Customers can have their own custom roles with particular sets of permissions to control which group of users can perform what tasks within the system. This applies to both internal and external roles.
C3 constantly monitors its systems and will use all reasonable efforts to promptly react to any type of incident. C3 has a Business Continuity Plan in place for the Hosting and Processing Environments and has established a detailed Disaster Recovery Plan. SQL servers are in mirroring and we have monitoring tools with alarms to ensure all the data backups are running properly.
C3 guarantees between 99.0 % and 99.9% uptime depending on the selected Service Program package.
Implementation
Our Project Team is composed of business specialists who are experts in yard management, dock scheduling and site/warehouse operations. Our business specialists have been dedicated to Yard Management and Dock Scheduling for many years, have visited numerous warehouses and yards and have successfully helped our customers optimize their operations.
Our entire implementation process is focused on customizing & adapting the use of C3 Yard based on the customer’s context, needs and requirements. C3 Yard is a highly configurable system that should reflect our customers’ specific processes and requirements. In order to leverage this strength, our implementation team is very attentive to processes and business rules, specific to every customer’s context.
In order to ensure a successful implementation, we use our agile methodology called C3 Hub Agile Management Process (CHAMP). It is an iterative and incremental method of managing our projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. The implementation process of C3 Yard follows a series of sprints, which contains a number of well-defined and documented activities that allow the project to move forward in a productive manner.
C3 Account Manager: The account manager is responsible for transferring knowledge to the C3 project team once the order form is signed and the project officially starts. The account manager stays involved in the project for review purposes of some deliverables and to ensure the project is always in-line with the financial business case. He is responsible for the long-term relationship with the customer and can be involved when issues must be escalated.
C3 Project Manager: The C3 Project manager manages the project throughout the implementation. He provides a short project status after each session to ensure the actions and homework are all listed and assigned. He centralizes project communication with the customer project manager(s) and coordinates the overall C3 team involvement.
C3 Business Specialist: The C3 business specialist is involved in almost all the project activities and has a business focus by making sure the solution provided to the client solves the business case and meets the client needs from an operational point of view. He is also in charge of training the super users throughout the implementation.
C3 Product Manager: The product manager helps the C3 team with any software implementation challenges.
Company
C3 Solutions was incorporated in June of 2000. Since that time, C3 has been focused on providing yard management and dock scheduling solutions. We believe our longevity, unique focus, and proven success is a key advantage to our customers.
C3 is a privately held company. The key shareholders of the company are Nicholas Couture and Greg Braun.
C3’s customers are leaders in their respective industries throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. While C3 is very proud of its customers, we diligently respect their privacy. Upon request, we can provide customer references.
Pricing
C3 Yard is a Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and as such simply has two components to its pricing:
The one-time implementation fee.
There is also an annual subscription fee. The annual subscription fee covers the use of the of the system, its hosting and the support & maintenance. The annual fee is based on the customer’s annual volume of trailers that check-in at the gate.
The cost of support and maintenance is included within the overall C3 Yard annual fee. All C3 Service Program levels include 24/7 support.
C3 offers four different service programs; Basic, Standard, Pro and Enterprise. All of the service programs include at least one test environment except the bronze program, which does not include a test environment. For more information on C3’s service programs contact a C3 sales representative.
We invite you to refer to a blog article covering specifically this topic: Yard Management – Essential ROI Considerations
Support
C3 offers emergency support 24/7.
Support is provided by C3 resources located at C3 Solutions’ offices in Montreal, Canada.
Customers may report issues either via our online issue tracking tool (for medium & low severity issues) or by calling our emergency hotline (for high & critical severity issues). When using the emergency hotline, our support resources are contacted right away and will be providing assistance according to our standard support agreement.
For other non-critical issues, C3 resources will be responding within C3’s business hours. JIRA, our issue reporting tool, is typically used by C3 resources to provide feedback on issues. If needed, we will contact the customer by phone or even send a WebEx invitation if screen sharing is needed to help the investigation.
We have up-to-date replicas of our customers’ production environments on platforms we use to test security patches, major configuration changes and software version upgrades before releasing them in production. We generally release 2-3 versions per year and deploy them in production during a predetermined maintenance window.
We usually try to keep all of our customers on the latest version whenever possible. The control a customer has on receiving upgrades will vary based on their selected service program level. We have created deployment and configuration tools that minimize the need for downtime in most cases.
Functionality
C3 Yard allows replicating the yard and breaking it down in various types of zones (e.g. building, slotted and unslotted parkings, gate houses, etc.). Zones can be enabled, disabled, renamed and their capacity can be updated on the fly.
As for business rules, destinations can be computed based on the vehicle’s current location, its content, its owner, and various other properties in order to send it to the proper destination.
C3 Yard is all about real-time visibility and providing users with the latest information in order to improve efficiency. C3 Yard’s Yard View provides a clear representation of the current yard’s state but can also be used to move trailers (e.g. drag and drop) and automatically create a task for the yard drivers.
The Yard View is updated in real-time which means that, as trailers are moved to/from locations in the yard, the screen will update to show their current location and other information such as loaded/unloaded, etc.
You can also configure the color coding for trailer profiles, trailer status (e.g. loaded, empty, etc.), trailer load types and numerous other attributes.
The nature of C3 Yard is that it is an application that is totally configurable at all levels. Therefore, user-defined rules and business logic are essential to the configuration of C3 Yard. All of the business logic is driven by our customers’ requirements and in essence all of the rules in the system are user-defined.
C3 Yard includes a flexible built-in reporting tool to which users can be granted a read-only, edit or admin access. The C3 Yard report generator provides a flexible environment where virtually any type of yard report can be built. These reports can involve simple tabular type reports to sophisticated pivot tables.
Dock assignments are based on several factors. If an inbound schedule exists there will already be a plan, which was built to indicate how many trailers of each type could be received by the operation for a certain shift, taking into consideration all of the operational constraints.
As trailers actually arrive, the gate application will then associate the trailer to the scheduled inbound shipment and the system will then determine if a door is available. If a door is not available, a set of rules exists to determine the best parking spot for trailers destined for that area.
If an inbound scheduled item does not exist for a particular vehicle arrival, a set of rules exist to establish where these trailers are to be parked.
Using the business rules and priority levels set up by yard controllers, C3 Yard constantly analyses the pool of work in order to assign drivers the most optimal tasks. Shunter drivers will receive clear instructions via a mobile application that they use to track their execution;
In C3 Yard, you can configure email alerts to highlight time-sensitive events requiring your attention (e.g. idle shunter drivers, late arrivals/departures, refused shunter tasks, trailers sitting at door for too long). Also, the system alows configuring email notifications at any step of the way to ensure all concerned parties are notified on specific business events.