Active floor supervision enables managers to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which employees might require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits can be utilized to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely important; lastly, you can address problems as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: Start by examining cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings could greatly increase how you transport and store materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted space can translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like 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. In addition, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much room can be made to accommodate items which are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Make the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. About 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could potentially have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to finish other tasks rather than having personnel doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling method should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for each specific item 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 could greatly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.