Active floor management allows managers to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor on a regular basis to stay abreast of issues.
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 extremely essential; finally, you can deal with problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization within your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and particular forklifts which operate in those types of environments could greatly increase how you transport and store supplies. What may not look like much wasted area can translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with some 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. Additionally, if you have many half-full pallets that are 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, much room can be made to accommodate faster moving items.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the flow of products is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility on a regular basis. About 60 percent of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You can potentially have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to complete various other jobs instead of having personnel doubled up moving objects would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling method is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple places inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for each particular thing so that they are simply looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same thing. These small changes can vastly improve the overall efficiency within your warehouse.