Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which workers might need more training and which might 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 important; lastly, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those types of settings could really increase how you move and store materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted space can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for instance, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have many half-full pallets staged or stored 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 items that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other jobs rather than having workers doubled up moving objects would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling process must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in many locations in the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for each 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 item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.