Active floor management enables supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which workers may require more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really important; finally, you could address issues as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and specific forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings can greatly increase how you store and move materials. What might not seem like much wasted space could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for instance, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Also, if you have numerous half-full pallets which are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room can be made to accommodate objects which are moving faster.
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 in your facility on a regular basis. About 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can potentially have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to finish other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up transporting items would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling method 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 time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple locations in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific place for every 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 vastly enhance the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.