Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can assist the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which employees may require more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really vital; finally, you could deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To begin with, you must determine the cube utilization within you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts that operate in those types of environments can greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What might not seem like much wasted space could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. As well, if you have many half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much room could be made to accommodate items which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility regularly. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other tasks instead of having personnel doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling process 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 place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall efficiency in your warehouse.