Attacking the peak

It’s that time of year again, when we start to worry about how we will make it through the peak season without disappointing customers, or killing ourselves.

Of course, it’s normal to hire additional part-time staff to cover peak periods of activity. How many people we will need depends heavily on how well trained they are and whether, or not they stick it out through the toughest times.  If we wait until the demand hits to bring them in, we actually lose capacity until they are fully trained. Although the training investment seems costly, the better trained they are, the fewer we will need at crunch time.

Blake Strayhorn at Sports Endeavors offered the following suggestions:

People referred by current full-time employes generally make the best part-time workers.

Realistic opportunity for full-time employment for the best performers is a strong incentive.

Begin hiring two months before the peak. Since demand is actually lower at this time, the total hours required to get the work done won’t keep everyone busy for eight hours a day. Take some of the surplus hours away from the full-time employes in order to maximize training time and make it worthwhile for the part-timers to show up. There will be plenty of time to go around once the season hits.

100% quality checks on the temps for the first week, or two is feasible during this period of lower activity. It will help in identifying additional training needs.

Train on the simplest tasks first, but allow time to cross-train on tougher tasks. You’ll be glad you did!
Bonuses for sticking it out through the season are appropriate. Include something for the full-timers who helped with the recruiting. Their example, and peer pressure, help to keep the team together.

Additionally, you might try some of these:

Divide complex tasks into two parts; one simple, and the other more difficult. Then staff with a team of a full-timer paired with a part-timer.

Some processes, like gift-wrapping, are in much heavier demand at peak. Consider an assembly line approach with short, well-defined work steps. Be careful to keep the line balanced. And, make sure that there is an experienced full-timer in place for quality control.

Take advantage of the increase in single line orders of very popular items. Pack these directly from full cases, eliminating the picking process.

Maintain a steady flow through critical capacity bottlenecks such as manifesting and shipping by balancing labor in upstream processes.

In large operations, high-speed unit sortation systems often represent the most critical constraint. There are a number of opportunities to squeeze a little more capacity from them:

Increase the batch size by putting more orders in a chute, possibly combined with the teaming suggestion above.

By-pass sortation with orders that may be completed with a sub-set of popular products.

Increase the utilization of the chutes by dynamically assigning orders to them as products appear from picking. An extension of this approach will result in a continuous flow, waveless process that enhances both picking and sorter utilization.

There are many ways to get over the peak, but all of them require starting the planning now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Apple, Jr. is a Director in The Progress Group. Prior to co-founding The Progress Group in 1991, he was a Partner with Coopers & Lybrand's SysteCon division. During 1992-1995 he served as a Senior Systems Advisor with Vanderlande Industries, a major conveyor and systems provider in Europe.

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession. Jim has also received the Institute of Industrial Engineers' Facilities Planning and Design Award. He has written numerous articles and handbook chapters on warehousing and logistics operations and is a popular speaker on logistics seminar and conference programs.

Prior to SysteCon, Jim worked as an Industrial Engineer with IBM, was Supervisor of Facilities Planning for the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors and was Executive Vice President for an automotive aftermarket parts supplier. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.