The last three words any warehouse manager wants to hear are “supply chain issues,” – especially when encountering them during the busy holiday season.

Every business deals with the occasional stock out or delayed delivery during peak seasons, but if the problems are consistent or not predicted to end anytime soon, it can have a disastrous effect on your business’ operations.

While there’s no way to truly predict or prevent supply chain issues, there are some preventative measures you can take to help lessen the impact and make your business a little less accident-prone during the fourth quarter of the year.

Prep Your Supply Chain For Q4 2024

Focus on demand forecasting. The National Retail Federation placed holiday spending for 2023 at over $957 billion dollars, and 2024 is predicted to follow along with the average annual holiday spending increase of 3.6% at least. Accordingly, your focus should be on demand planning and forecasting. What sold consistently last year? What didn’t move as quickly and doesn’t need to be reordered? Did you run out of a given item at any point? Reviewing these factors can help you to coordinate vendors, shipments, and order sizes to potentially mitigate these issues through the end of the year.

Order safety stock in advance. Similarly, any items that have proven to be more popular, have encountered supply chain issues in the past, or are going to be difficult to source should have safety stock ordered and put away for when they may be needed. Create some space on your boltless shelves, gravity flow racks, or pallet racking to keep these extra items, and make sure to designate them as safety stock areas to avoid normal inventory getting intermingled in with it.

Factor in shipping rates and times. Shipping prices and delivery estimates can be tumultuous at the best of times, but during the peak season it can be downright unreliable. When sourcing alternate vendors, make sure to factor in delivery dates, predicted ship dates, and their overall shipping costs as well to avoid potential shortages during the busy season.

Reorganize as needed. While nobody wants to create additional work around the holidays, the fact is that maintaining enough stock to lessen the impact of supply chain delays can have an impact on your overall warehouse layout. Taking advantage of the vertical space in your warehouse, whether on your pallet racks or by bringing in a mezzanine, can create extra space for these needed goods.

Plan for Mother Nature. Wherever you are in the country, one thing has been true over the last several holiday seasons: it’s hard to predict when the weather will turn. Accordingly, you need to have contingency plans for nearly every step of the process - alternate carriers, flexible shipping routes, and suppliers from different regions to help mitigate the risk that an important shipment gets held up by the weather.

By focusing on these areas, you can help get out in front of most holiday-season supply chain issues before they occur.