Within the distribution center, active floor supervision could help the managers to improve performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and really essential; lastly, you could address 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 situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you store and move materials. What might not look like a lot of wasted space can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. In addition, 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 space could be made to accommodate items that are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Around 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other tasks rather than having personnel 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 place. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big waste of time is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular location 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 item. These small changes could greatly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.