Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to improve performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be utilized to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and very essential; lastly, you could deal with problems as they arise.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts that operate in those types of settings can really increase how you move and store materials. What might not seem like much wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Furthermore, if you have lots of half-full pallets that are 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, much room could be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Approximately 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete various other tasks rather than having workers doubled up moving things would get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling method must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple places inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for each and every particular thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes could greatly enhance the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.