Demand spikes are no longer confined to the holiday season. Promotions, major shopping events, and shifting consumer demand are creating peaks throughout the year. But for many retailers, the year-end holiday rush remains one of the most sustained and demanding tests of warehouse operations.
Peak exposes every weak spot in an operation at once, and the costliest ones sit between teams. Maintenance checks the equipment and IT checks the network. But an error that starts with a worn cable often surfaces in the software, where neither team is looking. The same goes for a vendor’s phone number no one can find when a machine goes down, or a database still holding data the operation stopped needing months ago.
Across the many operations our team supports, one hour of downtime during peak can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in delayed revenue and lowered service levels.
Many of these gaps can still be addressed before the holiday rush. The checklist below outlines 13 practical checks operations leaders can make now across equipment, technology, and people.
In this article
- Most peak-season downtime starts in the gaps between maintenance, IT and the operations floor, and operations leaders can close those gaps before volume spikes.
- The checklist covers 13 peak-readiness checks across three areas: equipment and maintenance, technology and IT, and people, documentation and escalation.
- The six questions operations leaders ask their vendors this season make next year’s peak smoother and less costly.
THE CHECKLIST
The Peak-Readiness Checklist
Use these checks to identify potential issues, align the right teams, and address vulnerabilities before peak volume puts your operation under pressure.
Equipment & Maintenance
- Walk the punch list with your maintenance manager.Belts, motors and other wear parts take the most strain at peak volume. Confirm routine checks are done.
- Ask for a device error report.Your control system logs every time it can’t reach a device, and the ones that fail most are often the next to break. A report sorted by error count gives maintenance a short list to check first.
- Check the cabling, not just the device.Software errors often start with a worn cable or loose connection. We’ve seen one bad connection log half a million errors in a year before anyone checked it.
- Stock spares for the equipment you can’t run without.Know which machines would stop the building and keep their critical parts on the shelf. Waiting on a shipment mid-peak costs far more than the part.
Technology & IT
- Confirm server capacity against your peak forecast.Have IT confirm there’s headroom in memory and storage. A server that runs short at peak slows every system that depends on it.
- Clean up the database before volume hits.Old data from successful routing handoffs can slow database lookups, potentially delaying scans on the floor. Clear it out now and move heavy cleanup jobs out of the peak window.
- Review network rules for anything that changed.Dropped connections can trace back to routing, firewall, or ACL updates. Have IT confirm nothing changed that could interrupt traffic.
- List everything that changed since last peak.A list of what’s new tells your team where to look first if something slows down.
People, Documentation & Escalation
- Put reference material where the work happens.Seasonal staff won’t remember everything from training. Quick-reference guides at stations give them answers without pulling a lead off the floor.
- Make production visible on the floor.Posting hourly output, where each shift can see it, helps teams track their pace and recover faster when they fall behind.
- Write down the escalation path.For every critical system, document who to call, how to open a ticket, and who to escalate to if the issue isn’t resolved.
- Post vendor contacts where people will look for them.When a machine goes down, the person standing next to it should find the right number in seconds.
- Confirm vendor coverage and SLAs.Check that contracts are current, review what went wrong last peak, and confirm each vendor’s coverage hours and response times for the peak window.
VENDOR READINESS
Six Questions to Ask Your Technology Vendors
Not every gap can be closed before your next busy period. These questions are worth asking now, so preparation starts earlier and you know which vendors are watching your systems as closely as you are.
- Can you provide a health and readiness report for every server supporting our operation?
- Can you send us a report of the devices that logged the most errors this year, with your recommendations for what to check?
- Can you give us a list of everything you’ve changed in our environment since last peak?
- When did you last clean our database, and which maintenance jobs will you reschedule during peak?
- Can you provide training materials and quick-reference guides for our seasonal staff?
- What does your peak coverage look like? Who answers, how fast, and is it written into our SLA?
PEAK SUPPORT
How VARGO® prepares for peak
Our peak support team starts in the summer, reviewing each customer’s system data and flagging devices with high error counts for their maintenance and IT teams. Before peak, they clean up databases and adjust settings to reduce system load.
During peak, the team monitors each operation through COFE® and looks for problems before they slow the floor down. Coverage is available 24/7. Every customer reaches our team under their year-round SLA, with direct contacts and a clear escalation path. Operations that need dedicated support staff and faster response times can add premium support.
The end goal is a team that knows what to check, who to call and what to do when something goes wrong, before the busiest week of the year starts.
Talk to our peak support team about how we work with operations year-round.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
When should warehouses start preparing for peak?
VARGO®’s peak support starts in summer, when there is still time to close the gaps.
What causes most downtime during peak?
Gaps between teams (for example, worn cabling that shows up as software errors), old data slowing lookups, vendor contacts no one can find.
What should a peak escalation plan include?
Who to call for each critical system, how to open a ticket, who to escalate to, and vendor contacts posted where people look.
How do you prepare seasonal staff for peak?
Quick-reference guides at stations, and hourly output posted where each shift can see it.