Blue Yonder Integration for European Road Freight

Planning is not execution

A supply chain planning and warehouse stack decides what should move, when the dock should receive it and what the inventory position ought to be. None of that produces a position for a truck operated by a subcontracted haulier two countries away, which is where European road freight actually lives.

TrucksOnTheMap supplies that execution signal and returns it as events your existing stack can consume. Connection is over REST or EDI; there is no certified connector and none is claimed.

What crosses the boundary

The yard is where the two stacks meet

For most operations running a planning and warehouse stack, the highest-value connection is not the transport plan at all. It is the inbound door: appointments booked against real receiving capacity, and gate events reaching the floor before the driver does.

That boundary is narrow and worth agreeing precisely, because carrier identity, the unit of the appointment and the definition of arrival are the three things that break it. All three are set out on the WMS integration page, and the system boundaries either side in YMS against WMS against TMS.

How it connects

REST with JSON for live events, EDIFACT where your existing flows already carry the content, and a scheduled file exchange where neither is available. The channel is chosen per flow during scoping, and all three normalise into the same internal event model so downstream reporting never needs to know which one delivered a fact.

The seven weeks

GO LIVE is guaranteed in seven weeks, and the schedule is the same on every integration because the platform side never changes. What varies is how quickly your side can supply a test system and a named contact.

1. Weeks 1–2, scoping. We agree the field list, the direction of each field and which system is authoritative for it. This is the meeting that decides whether the project is easy, and skipping it is why integrations drift.
2. Weeks 3–4, connection. Credentials, endpoints and a first message moving in a test environment. Nothing is mapped yet, we are proving the pipe.
3. Week 5, mapping and events. Your fields onto our event model, including the definition of arrival, which is the single most disputed one.
4. Week 6, parallel run. Both systems live, event counts compared daily. Any gap is a mapping bug found before anybody depends on it.
5. Week 7, cutover and handover. Downstream consumers switch, monitoring is handed to your team with the reconciliation report that tells you when a feed goes quiet.

Data residency, GDPR and ISO 27001

Freight data is operational data about identifiable drivers and vehicles, so it falls under GDPR whichever way it reaches us. Three things are usually asked in a European security review, and the answers do not change per integration.

• Where the data sits. Processing and storage stay within the EU.
• Who can see it. Your freight data stays inside your trusted carrier network. A carrier sees the loads they are assigned, not your wider network.
• How it is governed. TrucksOnTheMap is ISO 27001 certified, and the controls that matter to a transport integration are access control, retention and the audit trail on every event.

Position data has a retention question of its own. Decide up front how long raw pings are kept as against derived events, because the derived events are what your KPIs need and the raw trace is what a works council will ask about.

Common questions

How does TrucksOnTheMap connect to Blue Yonder?

Over REST with JSON for live events, over EDIFACT where existing message flows already carry the content, and by scheduled file exchange where neither is available. The channel is chosen per flow during scoping and all three normalise into the same internal event model. There is no certified connector and none is claimed.

What is the highest-value connection for a warehouse-led stack?

The inbound door rather than the transport plan. Appointments booked against real receiving capacity, and gate-in and gate-out events reaching the floor before the driver walks into reception. That is where dwell, detention and supplier compliance numbers come from.

What data goes back into the planning stack?

Carrier allocation and confirmation, live position and ETA per drop, the dock appointment and door, gate-in and gate-out events, and the ePOD document. Expected receipts and unload confirmation flow the other way, staying authoritative in the warehouse system.

What breaks in this kind of integration?

Three things, all at the dock boundary. Carrier identity, because the warehouse system knows a vendor while the scheduling layer knows a carrier. The unit of the appointment, since a consolidated load carrying six orders is one arrival. And the definition of arrival, because gate, dock and driver report can differ by forty minutes on a large site.

How long does it take to go live?

Seven weeks: two weeks scoping the field list and the arrival definition, two weeks proving the connection, one week mapping, one week running in parallel with daily event-count comparison, and one week for cutover and handover.

Start at the inbound door

Show us one site. We will build its doors and shifts in TrucksSlot before the call so you see your own layout rather than a demo dataset.