Active floor supervision enables managers to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to identify which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits can 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 employees to be essential to the overall operation and very vital; lastly, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization within your facility. Check if there is much empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts that work in those kinds of environments could really increase how you store and transport materials. What might not seem like much wasted area could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have a lot of half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of room could be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less personnel finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other jobs instead of having workers doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
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 big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular location for each particular item so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.