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 problems.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, it helps to recognize which employees might need more training and which may 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 very essential; finally, you can address problems as they occur.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts that operate in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you move and store supplies. What may not look like a lot of wasted area could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. In addition, if you have many half-full pallets which are stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing valuable space to its full potential. By re-organizing existing stock and doing an inventory overhaul, much space could be made to accommodate things which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Take the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is sequential and logical. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can potentially have less employees finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish various other tasks instead of having personnel doubled up moving things would get more work out of the same amount of employees.
The order filling method must be reviewed and if it is identified that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location. If orders do not require items of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple places within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a particular place for each particular thing so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling all around the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.