Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can assist the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to identify which employees might need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits could be utilized to see who may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely vital; finally, you could deal with problems as they arise.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of environments can really increase how you store and transport materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted area can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have lots of half-full pallets that are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much space can be made to accommodate things that are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Approximately 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to finish various other tasks rather than having employees doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling procedure should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many locations within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular location for each and every particular thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.