6 min read
Best Practices for Inventory Management in Large Warehouses
Inventory management – keeping near-real-time track of every item in stock – is involved enough in a small business with, say, a 50,000-square-foot...
5 min read
For a business that has predictable rises and falls in demand throughout the year, seasonal projects make up an important part of their planning, where they work to align with customer demand. However, manufacturing workforce management of seasonal projects can bring challenges. Projects can cause bottlenecks and other obstacles if they are not planned or executed effectively. By balancing the challenges of seasonal workforce management with our recommended best practices, companies can better position themselves for success.
In a Dynamic Marketplace, Seasonal Projects Play a Vital Role
Seasonality can be complex, but there are strategic ways of preparing for it that allow companies to achieve a greater level of efficiency. They can ensure that they have the right products ready and available when the increase in demand begins, and it all starts with the manufacturing process.
Seasonal projects may include:
- Kitting and Bundling – Businesses may create special product kits or bundles tailored to seasonal needs. A business selling cosmetic products might offer a holiday gift set consisting of their most popular items in the same scent, all sold together.
- Custom Product Variations – Businesses may produce custom variations of their products to cater to seasonal preferences. Continuing with the cosmetic business example, they might introduce seasonal scents like pumpkin spice in the fall or peppermint in the winter.
- Seasonal Packaging – Seasonal packaging can be designed to make products more appealing to customers for the specific season. The cosmetic business’s custom product variations mentioned above will likely need holiday-themed packaging.
- POP Displays – Businesses might choose to create seasonal-themed POP displays to help retailers enhance their in-store marketing efforts.
These seasonal projects require meticulous supply chain management. Manufacturers must ensure they have adequate stock to meet increased demand during peak seasons while avoiding overstocking, which can lead to excess costs. As seasonal projects often require manufacturers to scale up their workforce, hiring and training temporary workers to handle increased production is just as important as warehouse workforce management. How this temporary workforce is managed has a direct effect on operational efficiency.
Strong Performance Begins with Strong Project Management
Effective management is the foundation of any successful seasonal project, requiring strategic planning, resource allocation, and careful execution. When done correctly, the business sees the following benefits:
- Meeting Customer Demands – Seasonal projects operate on tight schedules dictated by retailer deadlines and holiday shipping schedules. Effective management ensures companies can avoid delays that will negatively impact sales or customer satisfaction.
- Cost Savings – Well-planned resource allocation and streamlined processes lead to cost savings. When manufacturing workforce management is executed efficiently, it prevents increased labor costs from overstaffing or under-utilization of seasonal workers.
- Increased Revenue – Meeting the spikes in seasonal demand translates to increased sales and revenue, and cost-effective seasonal projects can significantly boost a company's bottom line.
Challenges of Seasonal Project Management
As promising as the increased revenue potential might seem, seasonal projects come with challenges, from demand forecasting to workforce optimization to contending with unexpected supply chain problems.
Accurate Demand Forecasting
One of the fundamental challenges of seasonal project management is accurate demand forecasting. Failure to predict customer preferences and demand patterns can lead to overstocking or understocking inventory. Last-minute adjustments to production or procurement can result in increased costs and decreased profitability. The retail industry, in particular, has learned the hard way about the consequences of inaccurate forecasting, as it has seen more unexpected inventory surpluses in recent years. Businesses need advanced demand forecasting techniques, supported by continuous market analysis, to make the most precise predictions.
Workforce Optimization
Seasonal projects result in a surge in demand for workers across various roles. From assembly to warehousing, many supply chain stages require additional labor during peak seasons. Efficiently managing this influx of seasonal employees can be challenging, as it involves finding, hiring, and training workers quickly while ensuring they adhere to quality and safety standards. Workforce optimization strategies, like flexible scheduling and performance monitoring, become essential to maintaining productivity plus cost-efficiency for seasonal projects.
Supply Chain and Freight Management
Factors outside the business’s control always exist, like vendor-related issues and freight logistics challenges. Supply chain partners experience their own rise in seasonal demand that they must navigate. Vendors and suppliers may encounter production problems, delays in providing essential materials, or limitations in capacity. These issues can have a ripple effect throughout the supply chain. Then, securing sufficient freight capacity to move finished goods can be its own logistical hurdle, further complicating seasonal projects.
Accurate Warehouse Capacity Planning
Even though the high-demand season lasts only a few weeks a year, companies must plan their warehouse capacity to meet these peak requirements. Manufacturers often need more space to accommodate raw materials and finished goods before being shipped to retailers. This may mean investing in additional warehouse space or equipment, incurring costs that must be carefully managed. An alternative, more cost-effective solution is for businesses to partner with a 3PL to handle their fluctuating warehousing demands and provide warehouse space optimization.
Future-Focused Decision Making
High-stress seasonal periods can make it difficult for businesses to allocate time and resources for in-depth analysis of past performance data. As a result, they may miss valuable insights that could inform future strategies and decision-making. Without the ability to learn from past operations, companies risk repeating mistakes and missing opportunities for improvement, making it critical to prioritize future-focused decision-making even during high-stakes seasons. Technology can facilitate this process through real-time insights and predictive analytics to inform decisions.
Best Practices for Successful Seasonal Project Management
How can businesses set themselves up for a successful peak season? Here are three approaches they can take to navigate the challenges and maximize efficiency for seasonal projects.
1. Whole-Chain Integration
Efficient seasonal project management involves whole-chain integration, and partnering with a 3PL that offers turnkey operations, seamlessly integrating with supply chain and warehouse operations, gives businesses key advantages.
Businesses should work with a 3PL that provides a primary warehouse capable of receiving raw materials from various vendors in sync with labor planning, so idle labor is not waiting on goods, cutting into costs. The 3PL should also:
- Maintain the bills of materials for their finished goods builds.
- Kit the finished goods based on a build plan that aligns with retailer orders.
- Connect via EDI/API to their ERP and retailers’ systems and handle all retail compliance issues pursuant to routing guides
- Prepare and ship to retailers, wholesalers and direct to consumers.
By handling every aspect, the 3PL maximizes efficiency throughout the entire chain.
2. Effective Planning and Cost Management
Businesses must have a strategic approach to planning and cost management where they leverage data for more effective decision-making.
Tracking quality, downtime, and throughput metrics provides valuable insights and actionable analytics. This allows managers to closely monitor operations and make informed decisions. Communication is an important supporting part of this; as issues arise, teams must be able to communicate quickly and adjust plans to meet delivery times. Cost transparency further supports effective decision-making. When a 3PL provides businesses with their upfront unit prices for each finished good’s SKU, they can rely on this predictability for their cost planning and keep a close eye on spending.
3. Flexible Workforce Planning
Businesses should have access to qualified, competent staff when they need it. Unfortunately, working with a patchwork of temp agencies too often results in only patchy service.
Prioritizing flexible workforce planning through an on-demand workforce provider gives businesses the workforce they need when they need it. They can avoid overhead costs when they don’t need it and avoid the stress of managing temp agencies. Workers from temp agencies often have strict limitations on their scope of work. By partnering with a workforce provider that offers value-added services, businesses can quickly pivot and scale the relationship to include more than just a single type of role if needed.
Improving Synchronization for Effective Workforce Management
The key to managing seasonal projects comes down to synchronization. For the logistics workforce, this means synchronization between project management, recruiting, and supervision. Businesses can establish efficient recruitment processes, coordinate with project management, and ensure every worker maintains quality standards, or they can use a 3PL partner to handle this automatically. With the ability to implement lean principles, 3PLs can help businesses overcome challenges in attendance and turnover, maximizing workforce productivity and improving overall efficiency.
Achieve Greater Efficiency for Your Next Seasonal Project with Productiv
Productiv provides specialized solutions for seasonal project management that give businesses the necessary resources, covering everything from inventory management to order fulfillment. With our commitment to flexibility, we ensure labor needs are met efficiently for seasonal projects, the post-holiday increase in returns, or any other time of year.
To get started with Productiv, contact us today.
3 min read
Getting Your Arms Around the Cost of Reverse Logistics in E-Commerce
Years of liberal returns policies in e-commerce — recently dialed back but not before the behavior was ingrained — have come home to roost in the...
3 min read
Warehouse Efficiency Strategies Used by 3PLs
A number of years back, there was an industry movement to instill lean and Six Sigma practices and principles – powerful efficiency tools in...