In the distribution center, active floor supervision can help the supervisors to improve performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might require 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 extremely important; lastly, you can address problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Start by examining cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts that work in those types of settings could really increase how you store and move supplies. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Moreover, 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 faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Approximately 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move employees to complete different other jobs instead of having employees doubled up moving items would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling procedure is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many locations within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for each particular thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes could greatly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.