Within the distribution center, active floor management can help the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might need more training and which may 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 vital to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you can deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization within 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 which operate in those types of environments could greatly increase how you move and store supplies. What may not look like a lot of wasted area could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: 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. What's more, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can potentially have less staff finishing 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 transporting things would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling procedure should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge time-waster is having the same SKU located in many places inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for every specific thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.