Active floor supervision allows managers to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which employees might require more training and which might 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 vital; lastly, you can deal with problems as they happen.
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 close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts that work in those types of environments could really increase how you store and move materials. What may not seem like a lot of wasted space can mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. As well, if you have a lot of half-full pallets staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of space could be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility regularly. Around 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete various other jobs rather than having workers doubled up moving items would 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 place. If orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the workers 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 within your warehouse.