Active floor management enables supervisors to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which workers might require more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you could address issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts that work in those types of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted space can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have lots of half-full pallets which are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate things that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could potentially have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to finish various other jobs rather than having workers doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
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 need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific location for each 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 thing. These small changes could greatly improve the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.