Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to enhance performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to recognize which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits can be utilized to see who might be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you can deal with issues as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization within your facility. Check if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which work in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store supplies. What may not seem like much wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate objects that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Approximately 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to complete different other jobs rather than having workers doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling process should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple places within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific place for every specific thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.