Active floor management allows managers to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which workers might need more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and really important; finally, you could deal with issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you should determine the cube utilization within you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts that work in those kinds of environments can really increase how you store and transport supplies. What may not look like a lot of wasted area could mean 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 more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Moreover, if you have many half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of room could be made to accommodate objects which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Approximately 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish different other tasks instead of having personnel doubled up transporting things would get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling procedure is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU situated in many places in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for each and every particular item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall efficiency within your warehouse.