Within the distribution center, active floor management can assist the managers to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers may need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits could be utilized to see who may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very essential; finally, you could address issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization within you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts which work in those types of settings could greatly increase how you store and move materials. What might not look like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. Also, if you have numerous half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much room can be made to accommodate items that are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. About 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other tasks rather than having personnel doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
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 need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places in the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for each and every particular thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.