Active floor supervision allows managers to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which workers might require more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and really essential; finally, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and specific forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments could greatly increase how you store and move supplies. What may not seem like a lot of wasted space can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Also, if you have a lot of half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much room can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up transporting objects would 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 need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places within the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a particular location for every particular thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can greatly improve the overall efficiency within your warehouse.