In the distribution center, active floor supervision can assist the supervisors to enhance performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which occurs there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely essential; finally, you can address issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts that work in those kinds of settings can greatly increase how you move and store materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted area could 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. What's more, if you have lots of half-full pallets that are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much room could be made to accommodate items that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Make 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. About 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete different other tasks rather than having personnel doubled up moving items will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling method is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in multiple places in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific place for each and every specific item so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could vastly improve the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.