Active floor supervision enables supervisors to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 key 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 identify which workers may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and extremely important; finally, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Start by checking cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and specific forklifts which work in those kinds of settings could really increase how you store and transport materials. What might not seem like much wasted space can mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet 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. Moreover, 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, a lot of room can be made to accommodate things that are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. About 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 personnel to complete other tasks rather than having workers doubled up transporting objects would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling method is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not need objects 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 particular item so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes could greatly enhance the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.