Active floor supervision allows managers to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize 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 everything that occurs there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very important; finally, you can address problems as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization within your facility. Check if there is a lot of empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which work in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you move and store materials. What may not look like much wasted space could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have a lot of half-full pallets that are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much room could be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Around 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less personnel finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete different other jobs instead of having personnel doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling method is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple places inside the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific location for each particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.