Active floor management allows supervisors to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which employees might need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and very essential; lastly, you can address problems as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Start by checking cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts that operate in those types of settings can greatly increase how you move and store materials. What may not look like much wasted space could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged 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 space can be made to accommodate objects which are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. About 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other tasks instead of having workers doubled up moving items will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
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 need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a specific place for each specific item 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 effectiveness in your warehouse.