Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the supervisors to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which workers might require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be used to see who might be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really vital; lastly, you could address issues as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts that operate in those types of settings could greatly increase how you move and store supplies. What might not look like a lot of wasted area could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. What's more, if you have a lot of half-full pallets staged or stored in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of space can be made to accommodate things which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Approximately 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete various other tasks instead of having employees doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling procedure is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a particular place for each particular item so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.