In the distribution center, active floor management can help the supervisors to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which occurs there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really important; finally, you could deal with issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you store and move materials. What may not look like much wasted space could 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 over 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, much 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 making the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could potentially have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish different other jobs rather than having employees doubled up transporting objects will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling method must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in many locations within the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for every specific thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall efficiency in your warehouse.