Tips for Preparing Warehouse Inventory Ahead of the Holiday Season
During the holiday season, retail sales, B2B, and other businesses will increase due to consumer demand. To maximize profits, businesses have to ensure the warehouse doesn’t run out of stock.
1. Make sure all machinery and processes in the warehouse are at 100%
Long before the holiday season arrives, warehouses must start to prepare. Starting from doing machine maintenance, stock taking, improving inventory management processes that are still wrong, and making sure all products are labeled (barcode/QR code/RFID) according to existing SOPs.
2. Use historical data to make accurate projections
Understock will result in lost profits, while overstock will result in high operating costs. Therefore, ordering the right amount of goods is very important. Analyze historical data from past years to estimate how many items need to be ordered to keep stock in check.
3. Adjustment of warehouse process flow to seasonal needs
Historical data can also help management to update warehouse floor plans. By analyzing which products sell best during the holiday season, management can speed up warehouse flow by placing popular items at the front of the warehouse.
If needed, the data can also predict how many additional operators are needed during the holiday season so that the productivity of the warehousing process does not decrease. This is very important because if there are fewer resources, the delivery will be late, but if there are excess resources, it will lead to high operational costs.
4. Utilizing the Warehouse Management System
All complex warehouse processes can be simplified with a warehouse management system. Items that have been labeled can be tracked in the warehouse. In addition, if supervisors want to access information in the form of totals, by types, and product mutations in each warehouse, they can easily use the web portal.
Warehouse operators can now update product movements directly from the application by scanning labels on goods. This process can reduce human errors such as wrong input, lost goods, etc.
