How can you manage material flow during peak periods?

Managing through peak season is all about planning ahead and communication. Start with a forecast. By definition, the forecast will be wrong. However, the deviation between the reality and your forecast will be smaller than the deviation between the reality and your normal run rate, i.e. you will be faced with a smaller amount of deviation. Share the plan you are preparing for with internal and external stakeholders. To get validation and buy-in. Clearly point out to your suppliers when you expect them to deliver. If it is busy at your end, it is probably busy with your suppliers also. Avoid the domino effect. Your supplier delivers late, you therefore start late and the delay increases along the chain. Plan and follow up your inbound!

What is expected during peaks is quick inventory turnarounds and high sell throughs. Below is how it can be achieved: 1. Plan ahead with sales teams on the projected peak volumes ahead of the supplier lead times. For example: If the supplier lead time is 30 days, plan at least 45 days in advance. 2. Inventory ABC classification 3. To minimize over stocking situation, identify the slow moving inventory and devise a selling strategy to liquidate the same during the peak periods. 4. Create hot-picking zones in the warehouse to minimize pick times. 5. Pre-pack inventory with high sell through to minimize pack time. 6. Work with suppliers and service providers to avoid capacity constraints

Having a warehouse layout that prioritizes high mover inventory is key. During a peak season typically what moves more often, tends to move faster, so having your goods organized in a way that is easier and faster to load and ship, helps to not get behind. Don't manage your warehouse like Santa's Bag, where you have to dig hard to find the next present.

Let's begin by saying forecasting is rarely right but no forecast leads to total disaster. Several years ago, I worked for a company that attended several trade show events a year and it was always last minute on what they wanted to carry to the show for give aways or what the special of the week was going to be. I arranged to get myself invited to a sales meeting to plan for the show about 3 weeks prior to the show actually happening and I was completely thrown off guard as the lack of planning they put into attending the trade show. They wanted me to provide 3 months' supply of some specialty kits and still have stock on the shelfs. We now plan for the trade shows months in advance and our fill rate increased.

When I took over as Operations manager at this factory, I found that Warehouse was spending 4 hours to pick assemblies for manufacturing and put them in a large box. Manufacturing would then spend 4 hours separating the parts by assembly and laying them out on a shelf in assembly. I turned around and had shelfs built on wheels and put one assembly to each shelf. Warehouse would them deliver the shelf to the assembly line. The assembler could actually pull the shelf with him as he builds the part up on the machine. The savings in time netted be a 22% reduction in time to build the machine.

Training your staff is critical, not just about process and safety which must be a common practice, but to let them know what matters the most to the customers and what brings more money to the organization. Once they understand that, is most likely for them to drive better decisions, which is something any organization should look for.

What you don't measure, you can't improve. Make sure you analyze how your performance is going and improve what is not going in the direction you expect them to. That's the main reason we have systems and with that, the most critical element "Data". I was told couple years ago by an analytics employee, that the only reason why we have data, is to be exposed and used to drive better decisions. With that being said, we have to ensure that the metrics we put together are aligned with the goals we are trying to achieve, if not, that metric may be useless.

Reduction in pick time. I had a outside warehouse on 50 acres. Our assembly parts were not small some weighed over a thousand pounds. I had us run a usage report and starting stocking our parts based on usage with the most frequently used closer to the building and least used farthest away. We found that by doing this we were able to increase our output by 20%. Next, we broke down the assembly so that when they picked one part the other parts that went with the assembly were in the same area cutting another 10% off the picking time.

Check and adjust is one of the most important steps to insure longevity and success of a process, it will need to be streamlined and adapted to make sure it is affective

Discrete metrics are key. For example, warehouse capacity utilization, forklift efficiency, and increasing order frequency, helps evaluate the internal handling while also providing order receipt flexibility, and managing working capital. These year round metrics are important to provide a baseline for comparison. Further, close internal communication with internal logistics, production, combined with external elements like customers, carriers, and suppliers, allow the business to recognize constraints and “true” customer needs in short order… hence planning. From a SC perspective, COVID-19 taught us a lot. Those of us who were successful, understand how to manage planning constraints and obstacles while protecting business needs.

Roland Williams has pointed you to the best advice and tools to use every day. These will ensure you know you’re ready, willing and able to work effectively through the peaks and valleys. My contribution for you is to remember that what comes in during peak is likely more than you have room in your facility to store for any period of time. It has to go out in as steady a stream as it’s coming in. Key to achieving this disappearing act is coordinating your customer order pick and stage with your outbound carriers. Your goal in this regard should be for your outbound floor area to resemble a classic cross docking operation. What helps with this is having carrier drop trailers in your yard and a ‘yard dog’ of your own to move them around.