Active floor management enables supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very vital; finally, you could address problems as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts which work in those types of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store supplies. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area can translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for instance, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of space can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Roughly 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete different other jobs rather than having workers doubled up moving items will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling procedure should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple places within the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific location for each specific item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could greatly enhance the overall efficiency in your warehouse.