Within the distribution center, active floor supervision could help the managers to enhance performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
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 everything that occurs there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really essential; lastly, you could deal with problems as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: First, you must determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments can really increase how you store and transport materials. What might not seem like much wasted space could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have numerous half-full pallets which are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? 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 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish different other tasks instead of having employees doubled up moving objects will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling process is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big waste of time is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular place for every specific thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can vastly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.