Active floor supervision enables managers to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which workers may need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and extremely essential; finally, you could address problems as they arise.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To start with, you should determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments can really increase how you store and transport supplies. What might not look like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. As well, if you have lots of half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much room can be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish various other jobs rather than having employees doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling process must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in multiple places inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific location for each specific item so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.