Guides
Plan the factory shutdown before it plans you
A supplier's Lunar New Year or August closure isn't a demand spike. It's a temporary lead time that has to cover the closure and the backlog after it, ordered before the slowdown in front of it.
A shutdown is a lead-time event, not a demand event
When a supplier closes for two weeks, your customers don't notice. They keep buying at the same rate on the same days. What changes is supply: how long it takes to get more stock once you ask for it.
That span is longer than the closure itself. Output tends to taper before the holiday. Factories “may reduce output 2–3 weeks before the holiday” (Maersk's 2026 CNY guide, via sendfromchina.com). Afterward, “it can take weeks post-holiday to normalize” (Maersk, via sendfromchina.com), and sendfromchina.com notes that “not all workers return.” Italy's August (Ferragosto) closures follow the same pattern: some plants close only around August 15, while others are “closed or operate on a limited basis for two or three weeks,” and then “a temporary backlog at factories, carriers, and distribution centers” follows (neelevat.com).
The usual mistake is to handle all this as one “big holiday order” placed by hand, next to the normal reorder system. The system keeps running on the old lead time. The side order covers some SKUs and misses others. A shutdown is a temporary change to one number: how long this supplier takes. If you treat it that way, everything that depends on that number moves with it.
Stretch the lead time, not the order
Start by redefining the lead time for the period around the closure. Then size the order the way you normally would.
blackout lead time = normal lead time + closure days + ramp-up/backlog days
pre-closure order ≈ avg daily sales × (blackout lead time + reorder cycle) + safety stock − on hand − incoming
The closure days are the part everyone remembers. The ramp-up and backlog days are the part everyone forgets, and they can run for weeks. The second line is the ordinary cover calculation with the longer lead time plugged in. You don't need a separate holiday method: the same arithmetic gives a bigger answer because the span it has to cover is bigger.
Suppose a product sells about 10 units a day and its supplier normally takes 30 days. The supplier announces a 14-day closure, and you allow another 14 days for ramp-up and backlog. The blackout lead time is 30 + 14 + 14 = 58 days. With a 30-day reorder cycle, 70 units of safety stock, 400 on hand, and nothing incoming, the order is 10 × (58 + 30) + 70 − 400 = 550 units. On the normal 30-day lead time, the same formula gives 270. The 280-unit difference is exactly 28 extra days of sales: the closure plus the ramp-up. It's not a demand forecast change.
When to place the pre-closure order
The deadline is when the slowdown starts, not the first official holiday date. The slowdown sets the timing, not the quantity. Before Lunar New Year, the export rush causes “capacity crunches for containers, trucking, and port operations” (sendfromchina.com). An order placed near the holiday competes with everyone else's for production slots and freight space.
Work backward from dates the supplier confirms. Ask each supplier in writing for its last production day, its last ship date, and the day it expects normal output again. Official holiday dates understate the real window, and two suppliers in the same region can close for different lengths of time. Your order has to be produced and shipped before the slowdown begins. The quantity has to cover everything from the closure until the post-reopening backlog clears.
Make it a supplier parameter change in Assisty
In Assisty, each supplier “carries the lead times, order cycles, and minimums that decide when you reorder and how much.” You set a supplier's Lead Time, Reorder Cycle, Min Stock Cover Days, and order minimums and maximums once, and “the buying table's suggested quantities use them automatically.” That's the lever for a shutdown. Lengthen the affected supplier's lead time to the blackout figure, and every product from that supplier is sized for the longer span at once, not just the few you remembered. Per-variant overrides are supplier SKU, cost, minimum order quantity, and case quantity, so one supplier edit moves every product it supplies. If one supplier's products are affected, it's one edit.
You can make that edit in the parameters, or by asking the assistant (Atlas): “Change Acme Supply's lead time to 7 days” gets the reply that the new lead time is set and “Tomorrow's reorder suggestions will use it.” From the supplier, you can then create a purchase order “pre-filled with suggested quantities, the supplier's tax and currency, and a delivery location.” The formula above is a generic illustration. Assisty's own suggestion is “computed from your sales velocity, lead times, and incoming stock — then rounded to your case sizes and capped at your maximum stock levels” in the Smart Buying Table, so once the pre-closure PO is in, its incoming stock counts against later suggestions.
Automation needs a decision too. A rule defined by “the supplier, the scope, and the cadence” will keep generating POs on schedule during the blackout unless you step in. You can change the rule's cadence or manage the rule in the UI or through Atlas. Or you can let it run and handle the output: “Every auto-generated PO lands in an approval queue,” where you can “approve it or reject it,” so a draft the supplier can't fill never reaches them.
| Aspect | One-off “big holiday order” | Supplier parameter change |
|---|---|---|
| Where the extra quantity comes from | A manual estimate made off to the side | The longer lead time feeding the same suggested quantities |
| Other SKUs from the same supplier | Covered only if someone remembers them | All of them move together, because lead time is set on the supplier |
| Automation | Keeps drafting on the old lead time | Change the rule's cadence, or reject blackout drafts in the approval queue |
| After reopening | Nothing to undo, and nothing adjusts either | Set the lead time back by hand once deliveries return to normal |
After reopening, set it back on purpose
The longer lead time is just the supplier's current setting, so plan to set it back yourself. Put the reset on your calendar when you make the change. Reopening day isn't the day to reset. Lead times stay long while the backlog clears, so keep the longer figure until deliveries arrive at the normal pace again. Then set the lead time back to normal and restore the rule's usual cadence. Suggestions go back to the ordinary span, and incoming stock from the pre-closure order is already counted.