Active floor management allows supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers might need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits can be utilized to see who might 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 very important; finally, you could deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Start by checking cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which operate in those types of environments can greatly increase how you move and store materials. What may not seem like a lot of wasted area can translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. As well, if you have numerous half-full pallets which are staged or stored in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of space can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete different other tasks instead of having workers doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling method is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular place for every particular item so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.