The holiday season is around the corner, and consumer demand peaks are already putting manufacturing and supply chain and manufacturing operations to the test. Just this past Prime Day, Amazon’s July event lasted four days rather than the traditional two-day event and drove record sales. According to Adobe, it drove $24.1 billion in online spending, up 30.3% from 2024. This spend amounted to more than two Black Fridays, which accounted for $10.8 billion in online sales during the 2024 holiday shopping season.
The success of Amazon’s Prime Day points to the increasing consumer demand. Retailers may look to aim for this new sales benchmark, and manufacturers need to be prepared to keep up. Peak demand is not just limited to the holiday shopping season anymore. All it takes is for one TikTok video or influencer post to go viral, causing an unexpected overflow of orders that impacts manufacturing operations.
The hidden costs of catching up with demand
A quick ramp-up phase can be overwhelming and extremely costly for unprepared manufacturers. If your production facility can’t keep up with demand, you risk production hiccups, shipping delays and inventory mishaps. The costliest problem that comes from unpreparedness? Bad quality. Maintaining quality requires repeatability, predictability and compliance management. You can’t achieve that through manual or outdated processes and siloed systems.
A surge in demand also comes with labor demands that need to be filled to meet order expectations. While it’s common for major e-commerce and retail companies to significantly increase their seasonal manufacturing workforce during the holiday season, onboarding training for these workers is often not thorough. It’s typical in these situations for onboarding and training processes to be condensed into only a few hours, which can cause additional challenges.
Ineffective training can likely ensure that human error will be a more common risk to your manufacturing operations when scaling quickly. When temporary employees aren’t receiving the adequate training and support needed in certain processes, it can result in incorrect shipments, supply chain delays and ultimately slower workflows. This could essentially defeat the purpose of filling the labor gap as it may be hurting operational efficiency more than it is helping.
Ramp-up phases not only complicate existing labor challenges, but they also raise issues with consumer expectations. Consumers today expect rapid delivery and real-time shipping updates. Without visibility throughout the supply chain, strains can cause shipment delays that may negatively impact customer experience.
Strains in the supply chain and unmet customer expectations can result in a surge of returns. During the 2024 holiday season, Salesforce reported that more than $122 billion of global purchases were returned, up 28% from 2023. Returns pose a significant costly problem during the holiday season and stem from errors with order fulfillment, wrong products or quality issues. This all can be traced back to the manufacturing facility and the challenges that come with a quick ramp-up phase.
Short-term rush, long-term risk
It’s actually quite easy for a short-term peak in orders to cause long-term problems and liabilities when you’re unprepared to scale production. When manufacturing facilities are not equipped with the right tools to scale rapidly, overworked equipment can go unnoticed, defects can go unflagged and there can be a limited view into the traceability of the supply chain. Any of these issues can impact the quality of manufacturing operations and production output. This can ultimately hurt the bottom line, putting company reputation and safety at risk.
While avoiding all hiccups during a quick ramp-up can be nearly impossible, smart manufacturing technology and advanced data analytics can help manufacturers be able to easily fix interruptions and avoid costly impacts. By offering employees real-time visibility into all production statuses and processes, they can make adjustments before it causes any lasting problems.
Building peak-ready production
For manufacturers to stay ahead of holiday consumer demand shifts or unexpected demand surges, they must be able to seamlessly connect, automate and track system operations. Manufacturers should focus on modernizing their systems in these three areas:
1. Digital instructions and training materials: By using one digital platform like a connected worker solution to institutionalize operational knowledge, manufacturers can standardize learning and training materials across all teams, ensuring they remain consistent and up to date. This is especially important as the industry faces a growing skills gap. According to a recent 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, 41% of manufacturers are introducing AI/ML technologies and increasing automation to fill this skills gap. Leveraging advanced AI and connected worker technology allows inexperienced staff easy access to onboarding materials and workflows. These tools can also help maintain standardization across all teams and help reduce the learning curve for new employees. As a result, new workers ramp up more quickly and receive the thorough training needed for efficient workflows.
2. Real-time tracking: Through the implementation of real-time tracking across all manufacturing and supply chain operations, manufacturers can gain deeper visibility into production statuses. When manufacturers can look at changes to inventory, downtime and quality inspections in real-time, they can dramatically reduce their response times. This allows them to preemptively address smaller hiccups before they turn into larger, more costly problems. Real-time updates can help teams ensure that quality and production operations are consistent and shipping and delivery are on schedule.
3. Advanced analytics to drive continuous improvement: Manufacturers can begin to analyze and spot patterns during times of peak demand with AI and machine learning. Predictive analytics can aid in identifying operational inefficiencies and, in turn, optimize production processes over time. This will enhance current operations and help manufacturers prepare for any future hiccups that can accompany spikes in demand. Additional survey data found that 38% of manufacturers are using AI to proactively monitor product quality and spot issues early on, ensuring that increased output doesn't come at the cost of consistency and quality.
Turning preparedness into profit
A spike in consumer demand is an excellent opportunity for manufacturers to stay competitive, increase revenue and improve their reputation. However, this only works if production is prepared to meet the influx of orders appropriately. If production isn’t ready to scale and processes aren’t modernized, then production operations can fall behind competitors, causing lost revenue and business.
Through smart manufacturing technology, facilities can be better positioned and prepared to keep up with consumer demand surges, whether it’s Amazon Prime Day, the holiday shopping season, or even unexpected surges. Consumer demands rise and fall, but manufacturers that prepare for the unexpected can rise to the challenge.
