Peak Season Recap: Flexibility Wins
“It’s gonna hurt, but we’ll do our best.”
Peak experience at warehouses doesn’t change much from year to year - not to say that it shouldn’t. Most will continue to solve the best they can with labor, scaling up what they already have, and not tempting fate with a new approach to their operations. Putting in play a known solution that has historically been good enough is still the dominant mindset. It's acceptable within the company, and it's an easy one to justify if it fails. No manager gets fired because they can't find labor - but they are in a more precarious spot if they try and solve for peak with automation and it fails. So, for the most part, even if they feel the pain, they'll get through it, and they're probably going to do the same thing next year.
When I think about what I've seen, and what prospects and customers share about peak season, the root problem is that it's a moment of temporary change for a system. For any system, in this case, warehouses and distribution centers, temporary change can be terrible - to the point where history repeats itself over and over again because there just isn’t a solution to the predictable unpredictability of the season.
Behind the scenes challenges, vast and varied
I came across a post from supply chain consultant, Steve Muliak, where he lists hidden reasons that can crush a retail DC’s peak season. These reasons include not enough pick locations, inventory staff and tote shortages, a lack of peak level testing with existing systems, managerial unawareness of resource constraints, excessive short picks, and more. So the fact remains that warehouse managers have A LOT to consider.
How many people are on the floor?
When do these people work?
Where do they place product?
Do we have the right people (especially seasonal temps) in the right roles?
How quickly can we train them?
So what can be done…really? Managers can change how they weigh work and how they try to process their work. But even under that, there are more dynamic elements that get layered on top of it which begs the question whether changing their existing system or processes is worth it in the first place.
Peak changes are driven by customer profiles and customer buying habits, which are difficult to forecast and predict. We find ourselves in a very reactive state, and it doesn’t help that the levers people have at their disposal around labor and footprint cost more than ever. Managers ask: How can I decrease my exposure, my cost, my change? And what solutions allow for that?
Flexible, frictionless AMR solutions that focus on your people can make a difference for peak and every other operations cycle you have throughout any year.
Accommodate customer profiles
What sets flexible solutions (like Carter™) apart are the same factors that set them apart in an average season. Peak season just magnifies the impact. If we consider customer profiles, it's not uncommon for us to see anywhere from 3-10x surges and spikes from mid November to before Christmas. Usually and especially in traditional ecommerce spaces like health & beauty, and apparel, the sale items are determined by the vendor. Whether the 3PL (if it is a 3PL) has actionable insights to that driver, is a different story.
Having an effective slotting strategy, one that probably carries over from the average day to day, is important. But AMR solution providers can help fill the knowledge gaps in addition to providing a tangible productivity boost. One way is to offer insights and suggestions on where product is placed before the surge hits. Businesses need solutions and teams that can help prepare and coach them through the transition before peak hits, testing scenarios, adjusting scale, and making recommendations to maximize their existing people and operations.
That being said, even the most prepared teams have to be on their toes. It's not uncommon for certain SKUs to go bananas to respond to sudden consumer demand. Sometimes this contributes to a majority of the volume. This is what makes peak that truly special time of year.
Let’s consider an example:
There are 10,000 SKUs in your SKU base, and on an average day, your team picks 2,000 of them, which makes up 10,000 lines. On a peak day, the team, plus a solution like Carter™, isn’t picking all 10,000 SKUs. They’re picking 3,000 or 4,000 SKUs that will account for 100,000 lines. You double the amount of picking SKUs, but 10x the volume for the 4,000 SKUs.
Change the approach
Obstacles that emerge during peak season can alert businesses to shortcomings in their current methodology - and that’s not always a bad thing. For example, it might make sense to shift from a cluster pick, that exists at steady state, to a batch pick. But they can only make that change if you have the infrastructure, both physically and systematically, that can support both batch pick and subsequent sortation.
Shying away from batch pick because of the fixed infrastructure needed for sorting isn’t uncommon. The key is to figure out how to focus on scaling what you already have going for steady state systems. There is, potentially, a shift in how you pick product that can get a lot more out of the system that you have, without having to double or triple your fleet. Going from a cluster to a batch pick with the same infrastructure might be the ticket, and here’s how it could work:
Identify what portion of that 4,000 SKUs is really driving a majority of that volume.
Introduce a fast pick lane, leveraging carton flow versus the hand stack locations that are common during steady state.
Widen aisles to allow for more traffic, and better flow.
These steps can make a big impact for customers experiencing obstacles with their status quo workflows. But the tricky part is that not all technologies can enable these changes.
Flexibility > Autonomy
The ability to go from autonomous to manual in a congested busy environment with a carton flow setup is a key differentiator for an automation solution. Congestion with robots is very real, and that congestion is amplified during peak seasons, because usually the footprint that customers have to work does not change. So what you’re adding more people, adding more robots, adding more inventory, but not adding the space to support it.
In steady state, maybe you’re at two robots per one person. In the manual state to scale for peak, you’re at 1 to 1. Solutions like Carter can:
Remove some robots or reallocate them to a different area away from the highly congested area,
Put the robots to work potentially in the sortation system
Go 1:1 with a very manual interaction between Carter and the human.
Decrease the distance from one pick to the next.
Create better pick density
The ability to change the way people pull product out of their inventory grids lets them fit the new customer profiles during these handful of weeks. Humans cannot slow down, and often, with a more autonomous approach within a congested area, operators will have to slow to adjust in a fast pick environment. Carter is the only AMR that can be easily touched and controlled, at any time, by a person. This enables a level of adaptability and lowers any perceived or tangible friction between people and solutions - in addition to getting the work done.
Human-robot collaboration, with the human first
Picking is a complicated task to walk into, and it can vary wildly from warehouse to warehouse. Packing can also be more nuanced than loading a truck. But on the flip side, putaway is simpler, and sorting is very standardized. If Carter can increase the UPH (units per hour) of an existing operator by 2-3x, by going from cluster to batch, there may be less of a need to hire more pickers. The managers can focus on hiring sorters, who won’t need significant training. Increased headcount is unavoidable to serve the surge, but where that labor exists and how much labor is going to be very different from the steady state, as well as favorable compared to their competition.
When businesses recognize the opportunity to incorporate solutions that suit the human resources they already have and plan to add during peak, the equation simplifies vs. becoming more complex with extra variables that literally crowd their space. People want to succeed and hit their goals, even when they increase dramatically during peak season. Why not give them something easy to use that can actually make improvements that last well beyond peak and change their day-to-day for the better?