Active floor management enables supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits could be utilized to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really vital; lastly, you could address issues 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 located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings could greatly increase how you transport and store supplies. What may not seem like much wasted area could translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have many half-full pallets 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, much space could be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility on a regular basis. About 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up transporting objects will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling process must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple places within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular location for each and every particular thing so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can vastly improve the overall efficiency within your warehouse.