Active floor supervision enables supervisors to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers might need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits could be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that occurs there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and really vital; finally, you can address issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which work in those types of settings could greatly increase how you store and transport supplies. What might not seem like much wasted space could 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 definitely consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of space could be made to accommodate things which are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Make the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other jobs instead of having personnel doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling process must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big time-waster is having the same SKU located in many places within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific location for each particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.