In the distribution center, active floor supervision can assist the supervisors to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might need more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the workers to be vital 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 should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts that work in those types of environments can greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What may not seem like a lot of wasted space could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. What's more, if you have a lot of half-full pallets staged or stored 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 can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. About 60% of direct labor in 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 personnel to finish other tasks rather than having employees doubled up moving objects would get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling process should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places in the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for each and every specific thing so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes could vastly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.