Active floor supervision enables managers to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which employees might need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that occurs there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very important; lastly, you could deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which operate in those types of settings could really increase how you move and store supplies. What may not look like much wasted space could translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU 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 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 objects.
How is the Flow of Product? Take the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can potentially have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish 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 place. If orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places inside the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a particular location for each specific thing so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall efficiency in your warehouse.