Seasonal Demands and Their Impact on Your Material Handling Systems

Strategies for tackling the most demanding times of the year

Many businesses face the pressures and challenges of peak seasonal demands. Stores that are selling chocolates and jewelry will see an influx of orders before Valentine’s Day. Florists sell 35% of the year’s flowers during the Mother’s Day holiday. Retail stores and malls usually experience a stampede of shoppers looking for a good deal on Black Friday. The weeks between Thanksgiving through Christmas will inundate delivery companies with more packages than any other time of the year.

Peak seasons are the period when consumer demands reach their highest levels. It is also an opportunity for businesses to shine and showcase their organizational talents.  They can leave a pleasant and enduring impression on consumers or fill them with frustration and disappointment. Businesses rely on and can thrive during these crucial times as it accounts for a sizeable portion of their yearly revenue.

During these times companies will face major obstacles and overwhelming challenges, some of which may be recruiting and training seasonal help, an increase in equipment usage, material shortages, logistical difficulties, supplier delays, weather delays, and a sudden influx in higher volume. All these issues can lead to poor performance and unhappy customers.
Fortunately, peak season is a specific event that occurs on the calendar.  Planning and preparation are the keys to success, especially for those in the shipping, manufacturing, or retail industries.  There are strategies for planning for a successful season.  

1. Understanding your business and paying attention to the needs of the customer. Knowing what your customers want and your company’s strengths. Understanding which product or service will be in demand.  Focus on leveraging the company’s core strengths to fulfill those needs. Ensure that the company website is dynamic, secure, and ready to take online orders.
2. Determine the anticipated growth. Review your business records and evaluate the differences during the prior year’s growth between past peak season volume and normal volume. Based on historic figures and current trends, develop forecasted volume growth models.  
3. Identify challenges experienced during prior peak seasons. Identify the previous challenges that held you back from having the best performance. What are the strengths? What are the shortcomings?  Keep a daily log of each day’s success and challenges for next season's review.  Learn what works and fix what did not.
4. Build a productive and capable workforce. With unemployment hovering near historic lows, considering recruiting and hiring earlier in the year. Create a training plan for new staff and develop procedures for all employees for handling the increased workload during seasonal demands. 
5. Have an ordering inventory plan to ensure sufficient product while minimizing storage space. Order the critical supplies early. Consider ordering in batches to reduce excess inventory and space constraints. Identify and designate storage spaces. Consider adding additional shelves and racking.  Have contingency plans to deal with delays and shortages.
6. Make organizational improvements. Optimization of existing staffing and improving workstations and layouts. Consider adding additional shifts to increase product flow and maximize equipment efficiency.
7. Consider how peak season volume will impact your material handling equipment. Review equipment capabilities, carton count increase, the weight of product, equipment usage, product gapping, belt speed, processing time, and throughput rates. Armed with that knowledge, determine if it might be time to consider increasing capability. Evaluate equipment to determine repair needs or replacement.  Putting a preventative maintenance schedule in place may reduce equipment downtime and prevent processing delays. Acquire additional equipment if needed. Utilize portable and modular conveyor equipment.
   
   The supply chain is still not as efficient as we would like in this post-covid world and equipment demand and lead time are still relatively long. The time to consider material handling systems and equipment is months in advance.

Customer demands, labor concerns, rapidly changing packaging, and supply chain challenges present serious challenges for distributors and manufacturers. TriFactor Solutions LLC designs and builds material handling systems to address these challenges through automation and storage solutions. We also offer needs analysis on an existing system to identify issues and provide an engineered solution that is right for your business. Other capabilities include new system design and re-engineering of existing systems to help companies adapt to today’s growing retail model while continuing to serve their traditional base effectively.