Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to enhance 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 may require more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you could deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to check how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which work in those kinds of environments could really increase how you store and move materials. What may not seem like much wasted area could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have a lot of half-full pallets which are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much room can be made to accommodate things that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Make the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Around 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can potentially have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete various other tasks instead of having workers doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling procedure must 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. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for each particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can greatly improve the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.