Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can help the supervisors to enhance performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
It helps to recognize which employees may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits could be used to see who might be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which happens there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and really important; lastly, you could deal with issues as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, you should determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to check how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which operate in those kinds of settings can really increase how you move and store supplies. What might not seem like a lot of wasted space can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, it is definitely consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have many half-full pallets staged or stored in aisles, you are also not using valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, a lot of space could be made to accommodate objects that are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility on a regular basis. About 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could potentially have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete various other tasks instead of having workers doubled up moving things would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling procedure is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple locations within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific location for each specific item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can greatly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.