The Management of warehouse activities during peak periods

There are very few industries or areas where volumes are fixed for certain periods of time - when we try to think of such situations, we may fall into the "trap" of filling capacity (production or storage or distribution). There may be the impression that if we fill capacity to the maximum, the volumes of goods and work will be constant, and efficiency and profitability will have high (maximum) values. It is a trap because, in order to operate at full capacity, we need EVERYTHING to be stable: production, suppliers, internal logistics, orders, customers, demand, domestic and foreign consumption, quality of raw materials and finished products, prices of raw materials and finished products and more. And this stability, we know this well, is obtained with high costs that, most of the time, we cannot afford.

If the volumes are not fixed, it means that we will have variations: sometimes too few volumes and then we tend to say that we have too many resources; and sometimes we have volumes at the maximum limit of processing, supply and distribution and even above this limit - when we tend to say that we have too few resources.

It is important, whatever these variations, to know them in advance so that we can prepare, organize and plan the resources that we have. When the situation demands it, we need to report problems in the supply and distribution chain in order to find solutions.

A frequently used and highly successful way is to standardize warehouse activities and determine resource needs (time, equipment, and space) compared to estimated volumes. This calculation can be done in the short term (6-8 weeks), medium (8-16 weeks) and even long term (52-72 weeks).

All the activities of the warehouse are impacted during the periods with high volumes: people, equipment and spaces.
For this reason, advanced volume planning is attempted in order to be able to distribute (as in the case of production planning when demand exceeds production capacity) the loading of the warehouse with volumes over a longer period of time, thus reducing the punctual, daily impact.