Active floor supervision allows managers to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which workers may need more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the employees to be vital to the overall operation and really essential; finally, you could deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you should determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments can really increase how you transport and store supplies. What may 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 example, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have lots of half-full pallets that are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room could be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to complete other tasks rather than having workers doubled up transporting items will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling procedure is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in multiple places in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific location for each and every particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes could greatly enhance the overall efficiency in your warehouse.