Active floor management enables supervisors to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which employees might require 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 workers to be essential to the overall operation and very important; lastly, you can address issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization within you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which operate in those types of settings can greatly increase how you transport and store materials. What might not look like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have numerous half-full pallets staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much room can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how precisely 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 could probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to complete other jobs instead of having workers doubled up transporting things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling procedure is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple locations in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for each particular thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could vastly improve the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.