JDK Management’s 35% Efficiency Surge: A Mobiledock Success Story
J.D.K. Management is a third-generation, family-owned business that has served Greater Shepparton since 1981. Today, it manages more than 35,000 pallet spaces across three temperature-controlled facilities, with another 3,500 in development. Offering cold and dry storage, blast freezing, container services, and pallet-handling solutions, J.D.K. Management is known for combining warm, regional service with leading-edge logistics systems.
Its customer base includes leading food and FMCG companies such as Bega and Mars, who rely on J.D.K. Management ability to deliver precision, reliability, and care in handling their products.
The Challenge
As operations expanded, so did complexity. J.D.K. Management faced challenges across its Shepparton warehouses:
- Inefficient dock scheduling: managed through emails and phone calls, creating bottlenecks and reactive planning.
- Limited visibility of inbound and outbound loads at the three sites
- Manual labour planning requiring significant effort across three busy sites.
- Carrier compliance difficulties, with inconsistent performance and ad-hoc arrivals.
- Proof-of-delivery (POD) administration time consuming.
- Pallet accountability issues, with ongoing disputes and losses across multiple pallet types.
For a family-run business built on service and trust, these inefficiencies were unsustainable.
The Solution
Third generation family Owner & Head of Operations Paul Kalafatis decided change was overdue. One day, he cold-called the Mobiledock office in Melbourne and asked: “Do you offer a dock scheduling product?” That call led to a full redesign of J.D.K. Management’s operations with three clear priorities:
- Visibility First: Capture all purchase and sales orders at the point of booking to create a single source of truth.
- Proactive Planning: Move from reactive to pre-day dock and labour scheduling.
- Pallet Control: Track planned, actual, exchanged, and transferred pallets in real time to eliminate losses, prevent incorrect charges, and automate reporting.
Mobiledock became the enabling tool to turn these principles into practice.
The Implementation
J.D.K. Management deployed Mobiledock across its three facilities, embedding structured processes that delivered:
- Load Identification – carriers enter valid purchase or sales orders at booking.
- Load Quantity Control – visibility of load sizes for optimal resource allocation.
- Carrier Compliance Management – measurable rules and structured bookings.
- Product Segregation – rules to direct ambient, chilled, and frozen goods to the right docks.
- Pre-Day Labour Planning – schedules built in advance to match demand.
- Central POD Capture – bookings with PODs stored for auditability.
- Pallet Management – J.D.K. Management controls a wide variety of assets — CHEP pallets, CHEP FB2 bins, CHEP Vicfam plastic pallets, Loscam pallets, plain pallets, MG pallets, and Bega black bins. Previously, a lack of verification between planned and actual pallet flows resulted in large, often disputed CHEP charges. To close this gap, Paul Kalafatis created an automated exception report that issues an alert whenever the number of planned pallets differs from the actual count. This innovation has given the business immediate oversight, preventing unnecessary costs, eliminating lost pallets, and streamlining audits with automated reports.
The Results
The measurable results speak for themselves:
- 50% Faster Dock Turnaround – average truck times reduced from 45 minutes to 15 minutes.
- 24% Reduction in Congestion – structured scheduling eased site and traffic pressure.
- 70% Improved Load Tracking – dependable visibility of all purchase and sales orders.
- 35% Higher Efficiency – proactive scheduling improved resource use and throughput.
- 100% Demurrage Costs Eliminated – reliable arrival sequencing removed costly delays.
- Safer Operations – calmer, coordinated dock zones improved safety for staff and drivers.
- Pallet Control Achieved – automated alerts and reporting eliminated pallet losses, removed unnecessary CHEP charges, and gave full accountability across all pallet types.
The Conclusion
For J.D.K. Management, this was far more than a software rollout. It was a leadership-driven transformation — sparked by a phone call, guided by reimagined processes, and sustained by a culture of service and accountability.
By combining disciplined dock scheduling, proactive labour planning, and innovative pallet management, J.D.K. Management has redefined what regional logistics can achieve. Carriers now enjoy predictable access and faster turnaround. Customers such as Bega and Mars have greater confidence in product handling and pallet accountability. Staff are empowered by visibility and structure.
In setting this benchmark, J.D.K. Management has not only strengthened its own business but also provided a model of streamlined, accountable logistics that others across the industry can adopt.