Warehouse management: succeeding on Black Friday without overwhelming your supply chain

In 2024, Black Friday generated approximately £64 billion in online sales worldwide, including £8.7 billion in the United States in a single day.

For supply chain teams, this is no longer just a marketing event: it is a large-scale test of operations management, digitisation and the ability of warehouses to absorb a sudden surge in demand without compromising service quality or sustainable logistics.

In 2024, Black Friday generated approximately £64 billion in online sales worldwide, including £8.7 billion in the United States in a single day.

For supply chain teams, this is no longer just a marketing event: it is a full-scale test of operations management, digitalisation and the ability of warehouses to absorb a surge in demand without compromising service quality or sustainable logistics.

The aim of this article is simple: to show how a warehouse can prepare before, manage during and learn from Black Friday, using AI, automation, traceability and clear workflows, while remaining understandable to both supply chain managers and IT managers.

Black Friday: when the warehouse changes scale

The first effect of Black Friday is a sudden increase in volumes. In many markets, sales during Black Friday week exceed those of a ‘normal’ week by more than 50 to 100%, with a peak concentrated on just one or two days.

For the warehouse, this means that everything speeds up at the same time: more orders to prepare, more items to handle, more lorries or delivery rounds to organise, and more returns to process afterwards. The supply chain must continue to serve stores, e-commerce customers and B2B networks, sometimes from the same stock.

In this context, the difference is no longer just about storage space or the number of loading bays.

It's about the ability to see what's happening in real time, make quick decisions and adapt workflows. A warehouse that still relies heavily on paper, Excel files or email exchanges will quickly reach its capacity limits. Conversely, a warehouse supported by a modern WMS and a supply chain platform can turn this peak into a demonstration of mastery: detailed order traceability, visibility of logistics flows, rapid trade-offs between lead times, costs and environmental impact.

Before Black Friday: making the warehouse predictable

A successful Black Friday is played out several weeks, even months, in advance. The first step is to ensure that data and forecasts are reliable. The most advanced companies don't just use last year's figures; they cross-reference historical data, marketing plans, e-commerce trends and external signals (inflation, weather, sector context). AI models refine these analyses to propose several demand scenarios, from the most conservative to the most ambitious.

These scenarios do not remain in a file: they are used to calibrate inventory optimisation and warehouse capacity. In concrete terms, decisions are made about which products deserve increased safety stock, which can be replenished more often, where to place stock (central warehouse, regional platforms, shops, dark stores), and how to balance volumes between channels. The challenge is not to eliminate all stockouts, but to reduce critical stockouts while limiting costly overstocking, including for sustainable logistics.

Next comes the question of layout and location. A warehouse that keeps the same organisation all year round is penalising itself. As Black Friday approaches, it is much more efficient to move best-sellers closer to the preparation areas, group frequently purchased products together, and possibly dedicate an entire area to promotional items. A no-code configurable WMS and platform allow these rules to be adjusted without a heavy IT project: modification of picking strategies, management of priorities by channel, adaptation of control workflows.

Finally, there is human and technical preparation. On the team side, this involves anticipating reinforcements, simplifying procedures, and providing advance training on basic tasks: scanning, checking, packing, and reporting incidents. On the systems side, it is necessary to test the load increase: multiplied order flows, intensive connections between the e-commerce platform, WMS, OMS, and TMS. A software bottleneck can cause more damage than a saturated dock.

During Black Friday: managing the warehouse in real time

Once the peak has started, the challenge is no longer planning but orchestration. The most efficient warehouses rely on a true supply chain control centre: a summary view that displays pending orders, orders in preparation, orders ready to ship, as well as the load per zone and per carrier slot.

This real-time view allows you to quickly answer very specific questions:

• Should more operators be assigned to picking or packing?
• Which flows are at risk of missing their transport cut-off?
• Should orders be redirected to another delivery method to keep the customer promise?

In this context, digitalisation and automation become real levers of flexibility. Tools such as pick-by-voice, put-to-light or automated sorters save precious seconds at each stage, without necessarily investing in full robotisation. AI algorithms integrated into the WMS can suggest the most efficient picking routes or automatically flag areas at risk of saturation.

Another key point is incident management. During Black Friday, the likelihood of stock shortages, damaged parcels or carrier delays automatically increases. If each incident has to be managed by telephone or email, the team quickly becomes overwhelmed. A platform that integrates a Supply Chain Dispute/Claim Management module with configurable workflows, on the other hand, allows these situations to be managed: when an item is missing, a scenario is triggered (substitution, partial shipment, re-promise of delivery time); when a carrier exceeds a delay threshold, flows are reassigned; when a weight anomaly is detected, the parcel is automatically sent for inspection.

It is not just a question of productivity: this approach also ensures traceability, which is crucial for managing disputes, returns and customer relations.

After Black Friday: turning a peak into a plan for progress

Once things have calmed down, many teams move straight on to preparing for Christmas or the sales. However, Black Friday is a goldmine of information for improving the supply chain.

Modern systems allow you to replay the entire sequence: volumes per hour, time spent in each zone, error rates, performance by delivery method, return rates, and discrepancies between forecasts and actual results. By taking the time to analyse this data, the warehouse can identify precisely what worked, what broke down, and what was simply ‘borderline’.

This is when investment priorities become clear: this area deserves to be automated, this type of order requires a different workflow, this delivery promise needs to be adjusted, this carrier is too unreliable. This is also where sustainable logistics comes into play: by reducing emergency transport, working on the most economical delivery methods, and optimising stock to limit destruction or returns.

The same applies to the supply chain: a warehouse that measures and improves its practices from one Black Friday to the next will always end up ahead of the game.

Conclusion: Black Friday reveals supply chain maturity

Black Friday is unforgiving. It immediately reveals whether a warehouse is run on a ‘gut feeling’ basis or whether it is based on solid digitalisation, reliable traceability, consistent stock optimisation and robust workflows.

A warehouse that simply adds temporary staff and overtime may be able to cope for a year, maybe two, but at the cost of high stress, costly errors and a poor customer experience. Conversely, a warehouse that takes advantage of Black Friday to strengthen its supply chain platform, gradually integrate AI, test new automation components and work on its sustainable logistics turns this peak into a competitive advantage.

The question to ask at the end of each season is ultimately very simple:

‘What have we learned from this Black Friday, and what concrete changes are we going to make before the next one?’

FAQ – Black Friday & warehouse management

1. How can AI be used in a practical way for Black Friday?

Firstly, AI can improve forecasts by integrating more data (historical data, promotions, trends). It can also suggest workload scenarios to determine the size of teams and stock levels, then optimise picking routes in real time during the peak period. The goal is not to replace warehouse teams, but to give them a better decision-making ‘co-pilot’.

2. Where to start with digitalisation if the warehouse is still very manual?

The most fundamental starting point is still a WMS connected to other systems (ERP, e-commerce, TMS). This provides traceability of stocks, structuring of tasks and visibility of logistics flows. Around this, a no-code platform then allows business workflows (prioritisation, exception management) to be modelled without having to redevelop everything for each new Black Friday challenge.

3. How can sustainable logistics be integrated into a peak context such as Black Friday?

Sustainable logistics can also be implemented during peak periods by avoiding overstocking through better inventory optimisation, promoting grouped deliveries (pick-up points, lockers), and limiting emergency transport and avoidable returns. The same digitalisation tools that serve pure performance can also be used to manage the environmental footprint of the supply chain.

Monstock is the stock and flow management solution that supports you in the digitisation and transformation of your warehouses. Simple and intuitive to use, Monstock allows you to analyse your customer order and purchase history to suggest orders accordingly.

For more information, contact the Monstock team.