Active floor management enables managers to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which workers might need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be utilized to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really essential; lastly, you can deal with issues as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is much empty space close to the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and specific forklifts that work in those kinds of settings could really increase how you store and move materials. What may not look like much wasted space can translate into 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. As well, if you have many 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, a lot of space could be made to accommodate faster moving things.
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 exactly product flows in your facility regularly. Around 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. 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 various other tasks instead of having personnel doubled up moving items would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
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 need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU located in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific 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 improve the overall efficiency within your warehouse.