Optimise Your Distribution Operations for Peak | FORTNA
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There's Still Time to Optimise Your Operations for Peak

Discover how to tackle peak season challenges in your distribution operations. Learn key strategies for peak planning, labour management, system reliability and operational optimisation to ensure uptime and efficiency during peak season.

by Andy Sands

Higher volume, labour scarcity, and compressed order fulfillment and delivery times can put extreme pressure on distribution operations during peak season. Uptime and efficiency are vital for your warehouse’s success during peak season and throughout the year.

In this FORTNA blog, we will review four key areas and the actions you can take to maximise peak season performance:

  • Peak Planning
  • Labour
  • System Reliability
  • Optimise Operations

Peak Planning

Understanding your operations from a performance and volume perspective can help you anticipate obstacles and address issues prior to peak season. Proactive planning can reveal bottlenecks, productivity barriers and opportunities for efficiency gains. Open planning with your operational and on-the-floor teams can lead to a better understanding of your organizational goals and distribution needs.

Your peak planning checklist should include:

  • Review historical order, delivery and inventory data to forecast order volumes and inventory levels. This will lessen the chance of stockouts and help you meet customer expectations.
  • Use previous performance data to reveal past issues and chokepoints, allowing you to mediate, and create emergency action plans if the issue returns.
  • Align vendors and suppliers while understanding their structure and contingency plans.
  • Ensure you have dependable data and measurement tools to benchmark your operations during and outside peak season.

Labour

Labour acquisition and retention are normally the number one challenges for distribution operations, whether you have full-time or seasonal workers. This challenge is amplified during peak season. Investing time in training and communication can improve your retention rates and lead to quicker onboarding. Your labour checklist should include:

  • Hold peak season training sessions to ensure team members are up-to-date on processes, equipment and device operation.
  • Crosstrain workers in multiple functions in the warehouse, allowing for flexibility and the ability to break up mundane tasks throughout the day.
  • Post daily goals and updates on monitors throughout the facility, updating the team on productivity, orders filled, and the status of hitting individual and team incentives.
  • Create a training process for seasonal employees that focuses on speed to the floor.
  • Investigate gig warehouse workers to assist with your seasonal labour needs.

System Reliability

Ensuring your distribution system is healthy and can perform at the high levels required during peak hours is critical. Just as you train and prepare your staff for the busy season, the same is true for your material handling equipment, devices and software.

  • Invest in a third-party assessment to inspect your material handling system and equipment. This can bring fresh eyes to your operation and help you mediate potential downtime events before peak.
  • Confirm your maintenance schedule is up-to-date and perform a pre-peak maintenance assessment to ensure your system is ready.
  • Review spare parts inventory and confirm you have the appropriate safety stock. Assess your parts cage to verify that the parts are in stock and available.
  • Connect your operations team with your technical support team, and review who and how to contact them and the support and escalation process.

Optimise Operations

Many activities can be performed to improve productivity, efficiency and throughput. Take the time to ensure your system is healthy and optimised.

  • Hold a practice peak season session by running your system at peak levels to measure performance and identify issues.
  • Review software updates and versions to ensure that all security updates and patches have been applied and that your system runs soundly and safely.
  • Consider a slotting inventory strategy to place and group high-volume products in easily accessible areas, reducing travel and increasing order fulfillment times.
  • Review order picking and fulfillment operations to ensure your organisation uses the most optimised strategy.

FORTNA Can Help

Ensure that your distribution operation is ready for another successful peak season. Connect with the FORTNA Lifecycle Performance Services team to learn how we can assist your organisation with assessments, spare parts management, and material handling systems maintenance.

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About the author

Headshot of Andy Sands, FORTNA Senior Manager, Business Development, Lifecycle Performance Services

Andy Sands

Senior Manager, Business Development

Andy is an experienced supply chain professional with 20-plus years of experience in roles ranging from engineering and project management to account management and business development. Andy is a key member of the FORTNA Lifecycle Performance Services organisation and holds a degree in electrical engineering from Ferris University.