Within the distribution center, active floor management could help the managers to improve performance in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor regularly, it helps to identify which employees may need more training and which may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and extremely important; lastly, you can address problems as they happen.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by examining cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts that work in those kinds of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store materials. What might not look like a lot of wasted space could translate into thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few 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. Additionally, 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, much room could be made to accommodate objects which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Make the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility on a regular basis. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. About 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from place to place. You could probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to finish other jobs rather than having employees doubled up moving items would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling method is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big time-waster is having the same SKU situated in multiple locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for every particular item so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes could vastly improve the overall efficiency in your warehouse.