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dynamic slotting Two Kardashians just Tweeted and Instagrammed a photo of your product. A tidal wave of online orders spiked your system. Is your warehouse ready? Is it ready to deliver same-day? This might sound extreme, but it’s exactly where we are today in supply chain. Agility and rapid fulfillment no longer fall into the “buzzword” category—they’re the expectations of your customers. The key to delivering next-day or same-day fulfillment effectively and profitably is cut differently for every business. But, moving inventory from Point A to Point B is (and will always be) critical to the speed of order fulfillment. And now more than ever, customers have a need for speed. Shaking up traditional slotting and material flow, we’re seeing dynamic inventory slotting grow in popularity in many industries. Businesses effectively using this model reduce fulfillment time and optimize labor by rethinking their slotting and taking a demand-based approach. Slotting – Then and Now In the good old days when companies had a few days to fulfill an order, pallets and slots sat in static locations. Slot replenishment occurred as orders consumed inventory. It’s a model that favors large, bulk orders. But, the trends we’re seeing and the future of supply chain don’t fit this strategy. The growing popularity of eCommerce’s low unit, high volume orders isn’t going away. On top of this, consumers are more unpredictable than ever. An item could be hot today, cold tomorrow—throwing a wrench in traditional demand and forecasting models. Also, many companies offer a broader range of SKUs than ever before. This proliferation in inventory typically results in a pick face that can’t accommodate every SKU. To solve these challenges, we’re seeing companies look to their greatest asset: data. Vital information, such as real-time order trends and predictive demand, allow warehouses to prepare […]