Active floor management allows supervisors to enhance performance within the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which employees might 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 very vital; finally, you can deal with issues as they arise.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization within you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is situated close to the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts which operate in those types of settings can greatly increase how you move and store supplies. What may not seem like much wasted area could translate into 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. In addition, if you have many half-full pallets that are 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 faster moving items.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Approximately 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete other tasks rather than having employees doubled up moving objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
The order filling method should be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple locations in the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific location for every particular item so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall efficiency in your warehouse.