In the distribution center, active floor supervision can help the managers to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which 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 essential; lastly, you can deal with issues as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of environments can really increase how you store and transport materials. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much room can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. About 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete various other jobs rather than having employees doubled up transporting things would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling procedure is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for each specific thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.