Within the distribution center, active floor management can help the managers to improve performance in 3 main ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to recognize which employees may need more training and which might be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and all goings on there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and very important; finally, you could address issues as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: To begin with, you must determine the cube utilization in you workspace, making sure to examine how much empty space is located near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts which work in those types of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store supplies. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: If you notice a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, it is certainly consuming valuable space. Also, if you have many half-full pallets stored or staged 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 faster moving things.
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. Around 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could potentially have less personnel finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish different other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up moving things will get more work out of the same amount of staff.
The order filling procedure must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many places inside the warehouse. Get the staff used of going to a particular place for each and every specific 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 can vastly improve the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.