Active floor management enables supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and really important; lastly, you can address issues as they arise.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Start by checking cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings could really increase how you store and transport supplies. 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: Like for instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have lots of half-full pallets that are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. About 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less employees completing 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 moving objects will get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling method should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple places within the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a particular place for each and every particular item so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.