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When Should You Start Preparing Your Warehouse for the Christmas Rush?

When Should You Start Preparing Your Warehouse for the Christmas Rush?

We might be a month away from the Christmas rush, but it’s actually never too early, or too late, to prepare for seasonal demand. Whether it’s preparing for Black Friday, Christmas or the Boxing Day sales, it’s imperative that your warehouse can take on the increased demand. From hiring seasonal workers and optimising storage to hiring equipment and forecasting stock levels, there’s plenty you can do to prepare for the seasonal rush. But when should you start doing all of that? Let’s take a look.

When do you need to start preparing for Christmas in the warehouse?

It’s never too early or too late to prepare for Christmas. This is because, even if Christmas comes and goes, you’ll be prepared for the next Christmas period. Lessons will be learnt during the festive season, whether you’re new to the warehousing and distribution industry or not. With consumer behaviour ever-changing, year-on-year, it’s becoming more difficult to rely on past trends.

This has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic because more people than ever before went online to do their shopping, which meant warehousing and distribution centres experienced a demand that has never been higher, and they had to deal with that almost overnight.

With this in mind, no situation is too big for a well-run warehouse, especially with the help of a Warehouse Management System (WMS). If you implement that, together with taking onboard the following tips regarding warehouse preparation, you’ll be able to tackle the Christmas rush effortlessly.

How to prepare your warehouse for the Christmas rush

It’s important that you prepare your warehouse and distribution centre for the extra demand this festive season. This is to ensure that your customers receive their products in good time and in top condition. If this happens repeatedly, you’ll likely see repeat custom and possibly new customers as a result of recommendations. So how can you deal with the upcoming Christmas rush?

Hire seasonal workers

It’s an incredibly popular thing for companies to do around the festive period. Hiring additional workers temporarily will help to relieve the stress and pressure from your permanent staff, thus helping to either retain or increase morale.

By offering additional help when needed most, you’re showing that, not only do you value your permanent workers, but you also value your customers. It ensures that stock is always available and can be shipped out in a reasonable time, even during the most demanding of times.

Make sure all of your staff are up to date with training

To help ensure that your operations are carried out in a quick, efficient and productive manner, you need to make sure that your employees have received the most recent training. Whether this be health and safety training or equipment training, it’s paramount that your workers know exactly what to do in any given situation. This mitigates the need for downtime until someone who knows what the procedures are come onto the shop floor. All employees will be able to fulfil their roles seamlessly with the right, most recent training.

Update your warehouse layout & floor plan if necessary

It might be that you need to move some things around the warehouse to accommodate for additional stock, especially if it was in demand last year or is proving to be exceptionally popular in the run up to Christmas. You’ll also find that this will help should you need to optimise your warehouse storage solutions. It might also be the case that you can move racking, for example, to a more convenient place that’ll allow for quick loading and unloading of goods.

Ensure your warehouse & your equipment has received the right amount of maintenance

You need to make sure that all elements of your warehouse are in good condition before the Christmas rush begins. This is the same for racking and equipment that might be used to keep up with demand. It’s important that your shelving and storage solutions can withstand the increased weight as a result of additional stock being ordered in and stored ready for the festive period.

The same thing goes for your warehouse equipment, whether it be forklifts, reach trucks, order pickers, pallet trucks and more. Not only will this ensure the integrity of your machinery, but it also keeps your employees safe when in operation. In addition to this, it protects your stock from becoming broken or damaged which leads to a loss in revenue.

Do some stock forecasting

Look at previous festive periods and look for trends when it comes to popular products. If it seems to be that the same items remain popular year-on-year, then make sure you buy enough stock to meet demand. Being able to predict and forecast stock levels will save you money, but it will also help to increase your profit margins because it works the other way, also. If you find that some items reduce in popularity around the festive season, then buy less of that particular product.

Optimise your warehouse storage solutions

If you need to increase the amount of storage you have available throughout your warehouse, then make sure you’re prepared for that. Use your stock forecasting to work out how far your warehouse storage solutions needs to be optimised. It might be that you can spread your stock out over shelving that would have houses items that are popular during every other season other than Christmas, as already touched upon. If you’re making aisles more narrow with the implementation of additional warehouse racking, then make sure you have the equipment to access stock as and when needed, such as a VNA forklift.

Hire additional equipment

As already mentioned, you need to make sure that you have the equipment available to be able to deal with the increased demand. You must also have additional equipment to accommodate the seasonal workers you’ll hire. Make sure there’s a machine available for everyone who needs one.

The best, most cost-effective way of doing this is by hiring a forklift or renting warehouse equipment for a set period of time. The likelihood is that you won’t experience demand as high as the demand you’ll experience at Christmas, so there’s no need to buy the machinery as it won’t be required all year round.

Multy Lift are pleased to be able to provide new and used forklifts and new and second-hand warehouse equipment. No matter what it is you need, we’ll have a material handling solution for you. With over three decades of industry experience behind us, you’ll always be able to count on us to help. For more information, get in touch with a member of our expert team today – we’re always happy to hear from you.

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