The holiday season is one of the year’s culinary highlights, bringing back beloved flavors and traditional dishes. These delicious foods are even better when shared with family and friends. To prepare for these festive moments, customers stock up on everything they need to make their celebrations special. However, grocery shopping during this time can be a challenge. Shoppers often face long checkout lines and out-of-stock items, leading to multiple store visits and more time spent waiting in queues.
The holiday season is equally challenging for everyone working behind the scenes in retail. Ensuring the right products are available in the right quantities across all stores is a complex task. Fresh products, which are in high demand, need constant replenishment and must be maintained in perfect condition to meet customer expectations. Additionally, seasonal items like turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, and baking ingredients must be distributed in large quantities. This surge in demand stretches distribution centers along the supply chain, often requiring additional manpower to keep operations running smoothly.
To maintain and enhance market share during this critical period, supply chain and warehouse experts in grocery retail need to address the following questions:
Many of these challenges are closely tied to the performance and capabilities of distribution centers. Automation plays a crucial role in effectively addressing these demands.
At TGW Logistics, we work with leading grocers to design warehouse automation systems that effectively manage the complexities of peak season demands.
TGW Logistics’ FullPick system is a highly efficient mixed-case palletizing solution that addresses peak season challenges with a three-step approach: design, prepare, and smoothen. Each solution is tailored to meet the specific needs of retailers during peak seasons, offering two common strategies:
All FullPick-based solutions share the following core characteristics:
Installing an automated solution is key to peak season success. With the right technology in place, efficiency is significantly enhanced. However, thorough preparation is also crucial. TGW Logistics’ On-Site Services teams ensure that systems are optimized and ready for high performance well before peak periods, minimizing downtime and maximizing reliability.
As the holidays approach, TGW Logistics works closely with retailers to smooth out operations together. This includes strategically ramping up throughput by shipping long-life items to stores several days before peak demand. When these goods can be buffered in-store, it reduces the workload on automated systems, preserving capacity for time-sensitive products that cannot be pre-stocked.
