In the distribution center, active floor supervision could help the supervisors to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to regularly walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to identify which workers might require more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and extremely vital; lastly, you can address issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts that operate in those kinds of settings could really increase how you store and move materials. What might not look like a lot of wasted area can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you see a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. As well, if you have numerous half-full pallets that are staged or stored 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 objects that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. About 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other tasks rather than having workers doubled up moving objects will get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling method is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU located in multiple places in the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a specific place for every specific thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.