Peak season Is a testing time of year for everyone in logistics and warehousing, and you’d be forgiven for looking forward to quieter times ahead.
When things calm down and you look back to how your business coped with peak picking times and ecommerce fulfilment this year, what will you say? Could your warehouse have been better prepared? What can you do now to prepare to face peak stock challenges better next year?
Peak challenges in warehouse storage
Retailers and 3PLs have various tools they can call on when it comes to their warehouse storage.
These include:
Volume increase – First and most obvious is the vastly increased volume of stock moving through the warehouse. From the moment they arrive, these additional SKUs need to be safely and efficiently stored and made available for quick picking, packing and dispatch to fulfil customer orders.
Seasonal products – The change from summer to winter, as well as the arrival of Thanksgiving and Christmas ranges, results in new shape and size of products that need to be accommodated in such a way that they are easy to locate by your pick teams. Involving the shortest walk sequence for fulfilment.
Returns – This is always a challenge at the best of times, returns become even more all-encompassing in peak season and immediately afterwards, as the combination of increased sales and the impact of mass gifting boosts the number of unwanted items being reprocessed back through the warehouse.
Staffing – Labour shortages in general and the competitive nature of peak season with temporary recruitment means, maintaining the number of workers required to keep your warehouse operating efficiently and fulfil customer SLAs is an ongoing challenge.
Overcoming peak challenges through effective warehouse storage solutions
In order to successfully navigate these peak challenges, warehouses need to achieve and sustain maximum efficiency. Operators need to be able to pivot quickly to handle more and different sorts of products, and to onboard new members of staff as needed. Use of warehouse space, walk sequences, picking and packing systems – everything needs to be well-organised and optimised to ensure your warehouse runs like a well-oiled machine.
The right warehouse storage solutions, together with good planning of your space, can make a huge difference to warehouse organisation, efficiency and agility.
Making it easier and quicker for pickers to find the right products with reduced walk sequences, clear product segregation, ease of access and appropriate labelling reduces the likelihood of errors being made and speeds up order fulfilment.
Find out more: Read our blog on how to plan your warehouse pick and pack space.
At PALLITE®, we believe we have developed a warehouse storage solution that can do all that and more…
PALLITE® PIX®: Tackling peak challenges one warehouse storage solution at a time
Our flexible warehouse storage solutions were developed to help customers maximise the use of space within their warehouse, store items more safely, pick more efficiently and accurately with reduced walk sequences, and help save the planet at the same time.
The PALLITE® PIX® range is made from the same 100% recyclable honeycomb paper cardboard as all our other products, providing lightweight-yet-strong industrial shelving units, pick faces and pick bins that can be quickly flexed around the stock.
From standard single and twin units with up to 400 pick faces across one storage bin, to completely bespoke designs tailored to fit into existing racking or accommodate oversized SKUs, the PIX®, PIX® SLOTS and PIX® XL Bin Box range has it all.
Interchangeable dividers and multipliers allow PIX® units to cater for the full range of apparel sizes and shapes, clearly segmenting everything from the smallest SKU to the largest.
Meanwhile there is space for labels and barcodes to enable fast, accurate product identification.
The extreme versatility of the PIX® range allows businesses to consolidate pallet locations and pick faces, making better use of the space they have and freeing up large areas of previously under-used space.
Consolidating pick locations into a smaller, better organised footprint reduces walk sequences, enabling faster picking.
Discover the surprising truth about how to pick faster in a warehouse.
PALLITE® PIX®: The fastest way to solve peak challenges
When it comes to logistics, speed and accuracy is key. Where change is required, it needs to be quickly and easily effected, without significant planning or a long onboarding process.
Our signature honeycomb paper cardboard is made from a raw material (recycled paper), meaning no delays as the result of materials shortages. What’s more, our state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities allow us to turn around bespoke designs quickly and easily – much quicker than they could be, manufactured from wood or steel.
On delivery, PALLITE® PIX® slots together easily without the need for tools or screws, meaning complete bays of units can be built in a matter of minutes. In addition, this means that once it has reached the end of its lifespan, our PIX® range is 100% recyclable.
All this makes PALLITE® PIX® not only a complete solution to solve peak challenges in warehouses, but also a quick and easy one to implement.
Find out more about the benefits of PALLITE® PIX® warehouse storage solutions.
