Active floor management enables supervisors to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to identify which workers might require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular 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 everything which happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you can deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings can greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What may not seem like much wasted space could translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: 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 staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room can be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Approximately 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to finish other jobs instead of having workers doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling process is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many places within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for each and every particular item so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.