Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can assist the managers to enhance performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to recognize which employees may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits could be used to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and extremely vital; finally, you can deal with issues as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which work in those types of environments can really increase how you move and store materials. What may not seem like a lot of wasted space could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet 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 definitely consuming valuable space. Also, if you have lots of half-full pallets which are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less personnel finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish other jobs rather than having workers doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling procedure should 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 waste of time is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific location for each and every particular thing so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.