Active floor supervision allows supervisors to improve performance in 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 recognize 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 all goings on there and the employees to be essential to the overall operation and very important; finally, you could address problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: First, 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 that operate in those types of settings could greatly increase how you store and transport supplies. What might not seem like much wasted area can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: For instance, if a SKU or stock-keeping unit has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. Additionally, if you have numerous half-full pallets 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 space could be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the flow of products is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility regularly. Roughly 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could potentially have less personnel finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other tasks instead of having workers doubled up moving objects 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 place and orders do not need objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU located in many places within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for every specific item so that they are just looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same thing. These small changes could vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.