For FMCG businesses, a simple 90–60–30 day framework provides a practical way of doing exactly that: 90 days to understand the reality, 60 days to test the response, and 30 days to lock in the operating playbook.

This approach moves peak-season planning away from simply forecasting volumes and securing additional transport capacity. Those remain essential, but they are only part of the challenge. The real question is whether a business understands where its costs and risks are concentrated, and whether it has actually tested its ability to respond when things go wrong.

Peak season is where FMCG logistics strategies are truly tested. Volumes increase sharply, promotional activity intensifies, transport capacity becomes constrained and the margin for error becomes smaller. For consumer brands, one poorly managed week can undermine months of careful planning and, ultimately, damage both profitability and customer relationships.

One of the biggest challenges is also one of the biggest blind spots: cost. FMCG businesses may have negotiated transport rates, but the rate card rarely represents the final cost of moving a product. Fuel charges, peak surcharges, dimensional or volumetric pricing, sudden increases in oil prices, residential and last-mile charges, address corrections and other accessorial fees can all add to the final bill.

This creates a dangerous disconnect. Businesses know that logistics costs are a major concern, but they may not have sufficient visibility into exactly where those costs are accumulating.

The answer is not simply to look at total logistics expenditure. FMCG businesses need to understand their true cost at SKU, customer, channel and lane level. A product that appears profitable when assessed against its selling price and basic transport rate may look very different once all logistics costs are allocated.

Importantly, these costs are rarely distributed evenly. They tend to concentrate around particular products, channels, geographies or transport arrangements. Identifying those pockets of leakage before peak season creates an opportunity to act rather than simply absorb the additional cost.

The second major issue is adaptability. Most businesses have some form of business continuity plan. The problem is that having a plan and being able to execute it are two quite different things.

A backup carrier may exist on paper but not be configured in the transport management system. An alternative distribution centre (DC) may have capacity but no established process for handling the additional volume. A contingency route may be known to management but never actually tested by the operational teams who would have to implement it.

Peak season is not the time to discover these gaps. The most effective approach is to test contingencies before they are needed. This does not necessarily require a major simulation. Moving a limited amount of volume from one carrier to another, testing an alternative fulfilment route or running a tabletop exercise around a DC outage can expose practical problems that would otherwise remain hidden.

The third consideration is that not every FMCG business has the same blind spots. A manufacturer may be primarily concerned with landed cost across different retail and e-commerce channels. A supermarket or retailer may be more exposed to demand uncertainty and the consequences of promotional activity. An online marketplace may be most concerned with the customer delivery experience, particularly where fulfilment is undertaken by third parties.

There is therefore no single peak-season logistics solution. Visibility and flexibility have to be designed around the specific role a business plays in the consumer supply chain. The 90–60–30 framework provides a useful structure for doing this.

90 days: audit reality

Three months before peak, businesses should stop looking primarily at forecasts and examine what actually happened during the previous one or two quarters.

Analyse shipments by SKU, customer, channel and lane. Compare quoted transport costs with actual invoiced costs and identify the sources of variance. Look specifically for recurring surcharges, inefficient packaging, problematic routes and customers or channels where logistics costs are disproportionately high.

The objective is to produce a ranked list of the biggest cost leaks and operational risks.

60 days: test the plan

Two months before peak, it is time to move from analysis to action. Test at least one realistic disruption scenario. What happens if a key carrier runs out of capacity? What if a DC experiences an outage? What if a major retailer promotion produces an unexpected surge in demand?

Most importantly, establish who makes the decision, what systems need to change and how customers will be informed. A contingency plan that has never been exercised remains a theoretical plan.

30 days: lock it in

The final month should be about operational discipline rather than developing another elaborate strategy document. Carrier priorities, escalation procedures, service levels and cut-off times should be agreed. A simple weekly dashboard should track on-time performance, cost per shipment or case, surcharge incidence and emerging capacity constraints. The dashboard does not have to be complicated. Its purpose is to ensure that problems are identified while there is still time to act.

Peak season is ultimately won before peak season begins. The organisations that perform best are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated logistics systems, but those that understand their vulnerabilities, test their assumptions and establish clear decision-making processes before volumes surge.

For FMCG businesses, the 90–60–30 approach provides a practical discipline: 90 days to understand the reality, 60 days to test the response, and 30 days to lock in the operating playbook.

The objective is not perfect preparation. It is to ensure that when peak season arrives, the organisation is responding to events rather than discovering its weaknesses for the first time.

Dr Ernst van Biljon, Dean of Research, IMM Graduate School