Active floor supervision enables managers to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might need more training and which might 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 very vital; lastly, you could address problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization within you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those types of settings can greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What may not seem like much wasted space could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Also, if you have many half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of room can be made to accommodate objects that are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. About 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish different other jobs instead of having employees doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling procedure is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for every particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.