The holiday season is just around the corner wherein warehouse activities tend to increases exponentially. During the holidays, the e-commerce marketplace stretches the distribution centers and employees to their maximum limits. Thus, it becomes important to plan and prepare your warehouse for the peak holiday season and avoid inefficiencies.
The following are the five ways to improve the warehouse for an efficient and successful peak holiday season.
1. Review Warehouse Layout
Before the holiday season starts and orders come rushing in, walk throughout the warehouse to ensure that each of the concerned departments such as receiving, inventory and shipping are organized to handle the surge. Make certain there is enough space in the warehouse to accommodate the increased number of products and packages coming inside the warehouse. Before the trucks start rolling in, focus on key issues such as storage and space utilization within the warehouse.
2. Review Order Projections
One effective way to plan for the peak holiday season is to review order projections for the current year. Many businesses do 50% of their business in the last quarter of the year, most of which is done during the last 30 days. Getting an idea about what to expect can be a good way to move forward. Review last years’ sales reports and determine how much product you are expected to move. This will help your warehouse to plan better and become more efficient during the holiday season.
3. Review Warehouse Staffing
Having order projections will help you determine the labor power required to meet the demand during the peak holiday season. And if your warehouse is planning to hire seasonal workers, start locking them down before the season starts and they are no longer available. Delays can lead to shrinkage in the labor pool, which can increase the hiring costs exponentially. In addition to this, once you hire them, offer them a certain degree of training to increase warehouse efficiency.
4. Perform Maintenance
Having a downtime on an essential piece of equipment is not at all good, more so during the peak holiday season. It is important to ensure all of the maintenance requirements are performed beforehand. Keep essential spare parts of equipment which can break down and thus impact the entire process.
5. Collect Data
If you are planning to improve your warehouse operations for next year, you need to start preparing today. Have a system in place that will collect data on the operations performed this year, which can tell you about the changes and optimizations required in your warehouse operations. Keep track of the number of orders received during each day of the peak holiday season and plan better for the next year.
