Active floor supervision enables supervisors to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which workers might need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and very important; lastly, you can address issues as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which work in those types of settings could really increase how you store and transport supplies. What might not look like much wasted space could translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have many half-full pallets that are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of space can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling method must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for each and every specific item so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes could vastly improve the overall efficiency in your warehouse.