When peak is over, getting back to normal hours is usually the first priority. The orders went out, collections were made and the warehouse got through it.

But dispatch figures don’t show everything it took to get those orders out of the door. There may have been extra hours at packing, supervisors stepping in to sort out priorities, or staff regularly waiting for stock to be replenished.

In our previous article, The signs a warehouse has outgrown its WMS, we looked at the workarounds that can develop when warehouse software no longer supports the operation properly. During peak, those problems can become harder to manage, alongside other pressures that have less to do with the WMS.

In this article, we’ll look at what can be learned from the busy period: where time and effort were lost, which problems are likely to persist when volumes return to normal, and what improvements are worth making before next year. We’ve also included a practical checklist to help with that review.

Where did the extra effort go?

Start with labour hours as well as orders dispatched. How much overtime did you need? What happened to efficiency when more staff came in?

Make sure you’re comparing similar work. A shift handling mostly single-line orders will look very different from one with more multi-line picks or specialist packing requirements. Total order numbers alone won’t explain a change in productivity.

Then look at the way work moved through the day. Picking may have kept up while packing fell behind. Orders can arrive at the benches in a rush just before a carrier cut-off, even when there was capacity earlier in the shift. Replenishment can hold up an otherwise well-staffed picking team.

A daily dispatch total won’t show that. Order timestamps, staffing records and a conversation with the shift supervisors should give you a clearer picture of where the delays happened.

And don’t assume every delay calls for more people. If the packing stations are already full, faster picking just creates a bigger queue.

Ask the people who dealt with the problems

The warehouse manager will remember the difficult days. The people picking, packing and receiving stock will remember the smaller things that happened over and over again.

Ask what they had to stop their normal work to sort out. Was a particular customer order type always awkward? Were packing instructions unclear for temporary staff? Did someone have to keep checking which orders needed to leave first?

Those interruptions don’t necessarily appear in a report. A supervisor can spend much of an afternoon answering questions and clearing exceptions while the dispatch figures still look fine.

It’s easy for a review to become a discussion of the biggest incident: a missed collection, an equipment failure or a system problem. Give some time to the routine frustrations as well. A process that wastes a minute or two on every order becomes a much bigger problem when volumes rise.

Ask what the team changed during peak, too. They may have found a better way to organise packing, split work between shifts or deal with a difficult order type. Keep the changes that helped. There’s no reason to return to the old method simply because the busy period has ended.

What will still be a problem in February?

An extra packing bench for three weeks could be all you need to deal with a seasonal shortage of space. Temporary labour may be the sensible answer to an unusually heavy intake of stock.

A process that depends on a supervisor manually sorting orders into carrier priorities is different. So are delays caused by orders arriving late from other systems or carrier labels not being available when they are needed. Those problems don’t disappear when volumes fall; they just become less obvious.

Look at the cause before deciding on a fix. Sometimes the layout is wrong for the work being done. Sometimes work is released too late or handed between teams badly. And sometimes the WMS doesn’t give staff the control or information they need.

If the problem sits with the WMS, find out whether the functionality is already there and could be configured differently. A limitation in the current process isn’t always a limitation in the software.

A practical post-peak checklist

You don’t need a major review programme. Get the warehouse manager, people from the main operational areas and whoever looks after the systems together while the detail is still fresh.

• Labour and productivity: How much overtime and temporary labour was used? Where did adding people stop improving output?
• Picking and packing: Where did orders queue, and at what point in the day? Were stations, equipment or working space the constraint?
• Accuracy and service: Which order types or customers generated errors, rework or missed dispatch deadlines?
• Stock and replenishment: Were pick locations kept supplied? What delayed stock getting from goods-in to where it was needed?
• Supervisor intervention: What needed repeated decisions, checks or help from experienced staff?
• Systems and integrations: Were orders, labels and stock updates available when needed? Which failures or delays needed manual intervention?
• Changes made during peak: What did the team do differently, and which changes should stay?

Put a little evidence behind the answers. “Packing was slow” isn’t much to work with. Knowing which shifts needed extra people, and roughly how long they stayed, gives you somewhere to start.

Compare the findings with a normal trading period, allowing for differences in order mix. Record the problem, its likely cause, what it cost in time or effort, and who’s going to look into it. You don’t need to put an exact price on every inconvenience.

Decide what needs changing

Some of the findings will lead to fairly ordinary changes: moving a packing station, adjusting shift cover, changing when replenishment happens or making customer instructions clearer.

Others will need a discussion with the WMS supplier. If order priorities are regularly decided by hand, could the system release work in a more useful sequence? If a particular customer process repeatedly needs intervention, is there a way to handle it as part of the normal workflow?

Ask what can be done with existing functionality first. Changes to configuration or integrations may be enough. Development is another option, but it needs proper scoping and testing, particularly if it affects live warehouse processes.

This is the kind of discussion we have with customers at OrderFlow. We look at how the warehouse works, use the capabilities already in the platform where possible and develop the system where there’s a clear operational need.

Don’t leave the decisions until the next peak is approaching. The review will be more useful if someone owns each action and there’s time to make and test the changes during normal trading.

You can find more about OrderFlow and how it supports complex warehouse and fulfilment operations at orderflow-wms.co.uk, or contact enquiries@orderflow-wms.co.uk to discuss your current requirements.