Active floor supervision enables supervisors to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize which employees might need more training and which 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 vital to the overall operation and really essential; finally, you could address issues as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you must determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts that operate in those types of environments could greatly increase how you store and move materials. What may not seem like much 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 over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have numerous half-full pallets that 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, much space could be made to accommodate objects that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Take the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. About 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete other tasks rather than having employees doubled up transporting objects will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
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 things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many places within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific location for every specific thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.