Active floor supervision enables managers to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which employees may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be utilized to see who may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely vital; finally, you could deal with issues as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Start by examining cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings can really increase how you transport and store materials. What may not look like much wasted area can mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few 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. Moreover, if you have many half-full pallets which are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room can be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Approximately 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably 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 moving things will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling procedure must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for every particular thing 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 can vastly enhance the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.