In the distribution center, active floor management can help the supervisors to improve performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very important; finally, you could address issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: Start by checking cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings could greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What may not seem like much wasted area could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Also, if you have numerous half-full pallets that are stored or staged 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 room can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
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. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can potentially have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to complete other tasks rather than having workers doubled up moving items will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling process is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific place for each specific thing 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 improve the overall efficiency in your warehouse.