Active floor supervision allows supervisors to improve performance within the distribution center 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 identify which workers may need more training and which might 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 very vital; finally, you can deal with issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts that work in those kinds of environments can really increase how you move and store materials. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have lots of half-full pallets which are staged or stored 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 can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by taking 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 potentially have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish other tasks instead of having workers doubled up transporting items will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling method must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple places in the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific location 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 can greatly improve the overall efficiency in your warehouse.