Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can help the managers to enhance performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which workers may need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and really vital; lastly, you could address issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which work in those types of settings can greatly increase how you store and transport supplies. What may not look like much wasted area could translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have numerous half-full pallets which are staged or stored 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 room could be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
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 sequential and logical. Around 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other jobs rather than having workers doubled up moving objects will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling method 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. One more huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for every particular thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.