Depot-to-depot handoff charts plot scheduled transfer windows as one bar and observed completion times as another. When the bars align, the handoff runs as planned. When a gap appears consistently at the same depot pair, something structural is happening—not a one-off delay.
During a recent review for a household-goods distributor, we noticed a 22-minute average gap on inbound transfers to the Bupyeong depot every Tuesday and Thursday. Scheduled windows showed trucks arriving at 06:30 with unloading complete by 07:00. Observed times showed completion closer to 07:22.
Site visits revealed two causes working together. The loading bay assigned to inbound transfers was shared with outbound retail routes that staged pallets from 06:15. Inbound drivers queued behind outbound staging. Additionally, the forklift operator assigned to inbound unloading started at 06:45 on those days due to a shift overlap policy.
Neither cause appeared in the dispatch schedule because both were local depot practices rather than network-level decisions. The chart made the pattern visible across six weeks of data where verbal reports had described it as occasional.
We recommended a dedicated inbound bay for morning transfers and a 06:30 forklift start on transfer days. The distributor implemented the bay change within a month. The gap narrowed to under six minutes within three weeks of observation.
When reviewing your own transfer charts, look for gaps that repeat on specific days rather than averaging across the week. Day-specific patterns often point to staffing or bay assignment issues that network-wide averages hide.