Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which employees might need more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely vital; finally, you could deal with issues as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts which work in those kinds of environments could really increase how you transport and store supplies. What may not look like much wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have many half-full pallets staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of room could be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Roughly 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less employees 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 personnel doubled up transporting objects will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling process is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many places in the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular place for each particular thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.