|

How to Prepare Your Warehouse for Peak Holiday Season

The holiday season presents a critical business opportunity, with many companies bringing in a significant portion of their annual sales during this time. But for many warehouse operators, the most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful. While increased inventory presents space and management challenges, it also offers up an opportunity to improve warehouse practices. With advanced planning and by taking strategic steps to prepare your warehouse for the holidays, you can be sure to maintain a smooth-running operation during this peak season.

There are thousands of warehouses across America that all end up in the same boat during the holidays. While each situation is unique, there are some core strategies every company can use to prepare their warehouses for peak season. These strategies include improving warehouse layout, optimizing inventory management practices and even investing in material handling and storage equipment that will streamline processes. Here are our top tips for managers to prepare their warehouse for the holidays.

Jump to Sections:

1. Assess Warehouse Layout

Before you can decide what steps you need to take to prepare your warehouse for the holiday season, you need to know your starting point. You can determine this by examining your current warehouse layout. Key aspects you’ll want to consider when it comes to warehouse layout include:

Assess Warehouse Layout for Optimal Organization

  • Space utilization: Review each area of your warehouse, including the shipping and receiving zones and stock areas. Critically assess how your existing layout is working and whether it will sustain the increase in inventory. Do you have enough room to receive significantly more inventory than you’re currently receiving? Is there enough workstation space for gathering picked products, labeling and shipping at a higher volume? It’s important to assess how much space you currently have to accommodate your increased inventory and activity so that you can decide what changes to make.
  • Inventory placement: You also need to decide whether or not your current inventory placement is efficient enough to manage the types of stock you’ll be handling over the holidays. To do this, you need to look at where you’re placing and storing your products so they can be easily accessible. Are you going to be bringing in new, seasonal stock that should now take up prime storage real estate? You need to make sure your warehouse pickers can easily get to the most in-demand items. You can accomplish this by moving less in-demand stock to less accessible areas.
  • Traffic and flow: Not only should there be enough room in the shipping and receiving areas, but you also need to make sure there is enough space for walk-through and forklift paths. Is there a clear pathway that facilitates easy flow and movement between shelving, containers and workstations? Improving your warehouse layout flow also means thinking of high traffic areas and minimizing the distance that workers need to travel to pick and pack items. Another aspect of assessing your warehouse flow is safety. With so much extra inventory coming in, it’s critical not to sacrifice safety by making the aisles too narrow and the shelves too full.

2. Project Upcoming Inventory Levels

After you’ve assessed your warehouse layout and determined some of the changes you’ll need to make, the next step is to determine how much new inventory you’ll need to accommodate. You won’t know how much space you need to free up until you know how much inventory is arriving on a daily basis. Work with other departments in the company, such as the sales and marketing team, to determine order projections. These projections are based on previous years’ trends as well as performance throughout the year. Here are some things to consider when assessing your upcoming inventory:

  • When will inventory start arriving? Many warehouses begin stocking for the holidays as early as September or October. It’s also important to consider how much daily inventory you can expect to receive as you approach December.
  • When will the bulk of the product arrive? When should your warehouse expect peak inventory levels? Knowing when your warehouse will reach critical mass is an essential part of planning for peak season to prevent bottlenecks.
  • How quickly will inventory turn over? Seasonal sales typically mean fast turnover rates, which can also help you know how much space to free up and where.

Working with other departments is crucial to figuring out what to expect. With their help, you’ll have a better idea of the level of inventory you need to start preparing for.

Order Projections for Holiday Season Inventory

3. Improve Storage Capacity

Now that you’ve projected how much added inventory you’re expecting for the warehouse holiday season, you can look at how to make room for it all. Making room for increased inventory means looking at how much space you’ll need for storage as well as much space you’ll need to receive stock and process orders. Consider how much room you’ll need to accommodate the entire process of receiving, storing, picking, packing and shipping products.

When expecting larger volumes of shipments, running out of warehouse space during the holidays seems like a big concern. However, the issue is typically about how well you’re utilizing your existing space, not how you’re going to acquire more. Warehouse space is notoriously underutilized, and the holidays are the perfect time to critically examine your use of space. Here are some tips for improving your storage capacity so you can accommodate holiday inventory:

Improve Warehouse Storage Space and Max Inventory Capacity

  • Go vertical: Vertical space is one of the most under-recognized storage areas in the warehouse. Stacking inventory up to near-ceiling height can dramatically free up floor space. Keep overstock seasonal items up higher and current, in-demand stock lower down.
  • Use containers: If your warehouse receives items that aren’t packaged, keeping them together in containers is the best solution for creating uniform storage. Containers are stackable or nestable and are designed to fit perfectly within pallet racking.
  • Consolidate pallets: Merge product from several near-empty pallets together into one pallet to free up space. Stack and store your pallets out of the way to keep aisles free and open up more floor space.
  • Add pallet racking: It may be the case that even after space-saving measures, you still need additional storage support. Add an extra row of floor shelving or install shelving up high, over the loading docks if possible.
  • Reduce aisle widths: Shrinking your aisle widths down to the narrowest width possible can save significant space. With narrower aisles, you can make more room for pallet racking or you can open up floor space for added workstations throughout the holidays. It’s important to account for the size of lift equipment and pallet loads before shrinking your aisles.

Once you have a plan in place for how to maximize your warehouse space during peak holiday season, you’ll be ready to check off other items on your preparation checklist. The next big challenge to address is making sure you have reliable material handling and warehousing equipment to optimize productivity and efficiency during such a busy time.

4. Service and Repair Material Handling Equipment

During a busy holiday season, warehouse managers can’t afford any unexpected downtime. One crucial way to minimize the risk of work stoppages is to conduct material handling equipment preventive maintenance well before the peak season starts. Preventive maintenance should be conducted on an ongoing and regular basis, no matter what time of year. With so much riding on the lucrative holiday season, though, it’s worthwhile taking extra preventive measures during this time.

Importance of Warehouse Equipment Preventative Maintenance

Preventive maintenance proactively addresses common issues with material handling equipment, like problems with hydraulic and electrical systems, as well as regular wear and tear. It will also enable proactive parts replacement to prevent unexpected equipment failures, which come with costly, time-sensitive repairs. Additionally, preventive maintenance will ensure your material handling equipment is safer to operate during such a busy season. The risk of injuries and incidents already increases during peak periods due to the higher volumes of stock, heavier loads and increased staff. Preventive maintenance can ensure your material handling equipment will keep your workers safe.

To err on the side of caution, schedule your material handling equipment preventive maintenance one or two months before your peak inventory load arrives. This gives you ample time and peace of mind as you continue to prepare your warehouse for the holidays.

In addition to ensuring your existing material handling equipment is in good working order, it’s worthwhile to look at what additional equipment you might need. Material handling and industrial warehouse technologies are advancing all the time, with innovations designed to make warehouse operations more efficient, safer and more productive.

As you get ready to receive an influx of holiday inventory, consider some of the categories of equipment that will support your warehouse’s workload:

    • Pallet management equipment: Tilting, turning and moving laden pallets is made possible with pallet inverters and exchangers. You can invert and change pallets quickly and efficiently with these machines, meaning you save time having to manually remove product from one pallet to place it on another pallet. You’ll also reduce the risk of injury and product damage when you rely on safe and effective pallet inverters and exchangers suitable for your product loads.
    • Workstation equipment: With more inventory comes a greater need to improve workstation efficiency. Workstation equipment like lift tables and loaders increase productivity and prevent repetitive motion injuries through better ergonomic solutions. As you prepare for the busy holiday season, consider how workstation solutions can better assist workers with more convenient pallet, container and bin positioning.

Workstation Warehouse Equipment

  • Loading and storage equipment: Improve your loading and shipping efficiency this holiday season with equipment like stackable plastic palletspallet dispensers and stretch wrappers. From loading to storing to shipping, these solutions help you ship more product faster and safer. Ensure you have enough plastic pallets this holiday season and that you can efficiently store and dispense them as well as properly load them with a convenient stretch wrapping machine.

Using the right equipment for your warehouse improves efficiency, increases worker productivity and makes for a safer working environment. You can take your operation to the next level this peak holiday season with better industrial equipment for your warehouse.

6. Maintain a Clean and Organized Environment

Preparing for the peak season means making sure you’re doing all you can to facilitate greater efficiency and worker productivity. Nothing can detract from productivity quite like a messy, disorganized work environment. As you approach the peak period, perform a work environment audit to identify opportunities to improve cleanliness and organization. Workstations, in particular, can present an opportunity to maximize efficiency.

Ensure that every workstation is well equipped with all necessary work materials. All items should have a designated home and even be labeled to prevent misplacing them. When workers know exactly where their tools are and can easily access them, they’ll work much more effectively, which adds up to significant savings in labor costs over the course of such a busy season.

7. Leverage Technology

Warehouse management systems (WMS) offer a wealth of insight into not only inventory management but labor and productivity too. Despite the sophisticated functionality of most WMS today, many warehouse operators don’t take advantage of their full capabilities. Typically, the primary WMS function that warehouse managers rely on is locating inventory within the warehouse. However, WMS is much more comprehensive than that.

As you prepare your warehouse for the holidays, you might consider how a WMS can offer you a more comprehensive solution from the time product enters the warehouse to the time it leaves. Warehouse management systems can help you manage everything from receiving and storing items to picking, packing and shipping them. WMS can also give you insight into worker productivity, helping you to tighten up processes and improve efficiency. And with so much more inventory to manage during the holidays, it’s important to rely on your WMS to help reduce picking and shipping errors so you can elevate your customer service.

Benefits of a Warehouse Management System (WMS)

If you haven’t already familiarized yourself with all that your WMS can do, be sure to run through your software thoroughly well ahead of the peak season. As the holiday rush kicks off, you’ll have a better idea of what metrics you can monitor to better manage your increased inventory and expanded workforce.

id=”staff” class=”anchor”>8. Hire Enough Staff

For many companies, an essential part of preparing the warehouse for the holidays is hiring seasonal staff. A combination of past experience and order projections will help you determine how much additional staff you’ll need for the season — and when. By calculating your staffing requirements based on productivity targets, you can determine how many additional workers you’ll need and when they need to begin. If you determine the number of orders or shipments one worker can process per hour, using your order projections, you can calculate how much additional support you’ll need to handle the loads on a daily basis.

Once you’ve figured out a productivity goal, you can begin the hiring process. Be sure to start your recruiting efforts early enough that you can onboard and train the new hires well before your warehouse starts to feel the pressure of increased holiday inventory. Onboarding and training new hires should be done en masse to minimize these costs and get everyone up to speed as efficiently as possible.

Be sure to work closely with your company’s HR department to develop a strategic hiring, onboarding and retention program to meet your staffing needs. You might also consider bringing in third-party help, like a staffing agency, to streamline the hiring process. It’s also important to keep in mind the added liability and labor requirements of bringing on additional staff. Consider whether you have a robust enough safety and health program that meets OSHA standards and what additional safety solutions you may need to implement as the size of your workforce increases.

Staffing and Hiring Strategies for Seasonal Warehouse Employers

Other staffing considerations include whether or not your company is willing to pay bonuses or offer contracts to new hires who stay on after the holidays. During the peak holiday season, it’s all hands on deck, and the more help warehouse managers can get, the more prepared they’ll feel to rise to the occasion of the upcoming busy stretch.

9. Start Early and Plan Ahead

Getting an early jump on your holiday prep is one of the best gifts you can give yourself as a warehouse manager. Giving yourself five to six months is ideal, but in many cases, warehouses don’t begin their prep until two months before the holiday rush. Consider developing your own holiday season warehouse preparation checklist and itemizing the points you need to cover. Work backward from the list and schedule out what needs to get done.

Planning for Peak Holiday Season in your Warehouse

If you decide you need to invest in new industrial equipment for your warehouse, begin that process as early as possible so you can get your team on board with the new equipment and develop any necessary SOPs well before the holiday season. To further help you prepare and plan ahead, you might consider hiring a warehouse management consulting firm, who can advise your team on how to make the most of your warehouse storage and how to optimize productivity. They may be able to identify bottlenecks that you can’t foresee and offer recommendations to prevent them.

Planning ahead is important, but so is reflecting on your performance after the holiday season is done. Learning from mistakes and challenges helps you refine systems and processes and make the changes needed to improve next year. Have a system for taking notes and collecting data during the current holiday season. Decide which key performance metrics you want to track. This data becomes invaluable as you plan for next year’s holiday season. Let the knowledge you collect inform what changes you need to make next year to optimize your productivity, performance and customer service even more.

Choose Cherry’s for Your Holiday Season Warehouse Needs

Preparing your warehouse for the peak holiday season is all about taking advantage of every available opportunity you have to increase efficiency and organization. That’s where Cherry’s Industrial Equipment can be a trusted ally this peak season. Our industrial equipment optimizes your entire warehouse operation. Our pallet management equipment, including our pallet invertersdispenserschangers and tippers and upenders, save time by making it easier to move, lift and turn loaded pallets and change them out. Our pallet management solutions also make warehouse work safer by protecting workers from injuries and incidents.

To further streamline your processes, Cherry’s also offers convenient solutions that cut down on tasks like wrapping pallet loads and washing and cleaning plastic pallets. We offer a range of stretch wrapping machines that cut back on time-consuming hand wrapping. Automatic pallet washers and washing equipment also help to speed up pallet management processes, so you can quickly make more pallets available for loading. If you’re running a busy cold storage facility, you’ll also want to consider freezer spacer removal systems to speed up pallet and spacer retrieval during the peak season.

Choosing the right warehouse equipment improves the speed and efficiency of your overall operation. You’ll prevent unnecessary product loss and labor costs and improve your business’ bottom line. Contact Cherry’s Industrial Equipment today to speak with one of our representatives about the best solutions for your warehouse this peak holiday season. Call us today at 1-800-350-0011 or contact us online.

Warehouse Equipment Provider