Hit 50 same-day deliveries last month and my whole system nearly fell apart

We had 50 orders go out the same day last month (a record for us). I thought our sorting and packing process could handle it, but by 3pm stuff was getting mixed up and I had to pull two people off other tasks to fix it. It made me realize we never planned for that volume of rush orders. Anyone else hit a capacity number that caught you off guard?

2 comments

2 Comments

michaela1616d ago

We had the exact same thing happen around 40 orders a while back, and the fix was super simple once we stumbled on it. We started color coding the packing slips by priority level (red for same-day, blue for next-day), and it cut down on the sorting chaos big time. Also, a tip that saved us is to pre-stage those rush orders on a separate table or shelf from the get-go (not after they pile up). You might need a dedicated person just to keep the flow going on those crazy volume days, even if it's only for a few hours.

iris39416d ago

Color coding sounds nice but it's just another step that slows things down when you're already in the weeds. We tried that and the problem was nobody remembered which color meant what after the first hour, so we just confused ourselves more. Pre-staging rush orders only works if you have the space, which a lot of smaller operations just don't have. The dedicated person idea is where you're right though, having one person just watch the clock and pull urgent orders makes a bigger difference than any sorting system we've tried. But honestly I think the whole color coding thing is a bandaid for a system that's already broken on high volume days.