Active floor supervision 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 employees might require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits can be used to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings can really increase how you store and transport materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted space can translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some 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. Also, if you have many half-full pallets 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, a lot of space could be made to accommodate items which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Roughly 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other tasks instead of having employees doubled up transporting objects 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 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 in the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for each particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.