Active floor management enables managers to improve performance in the distribution center in 3 main ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of issues.
By having management show presence on the floor on a regular basis, 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 everything that happens there and the workers to be vital to the overall operation and very vital; finally, you could deal with issues as they happen.
Determine the Use of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is a lot of empty space near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and certain forklifts which operate in those types of environments could really increase how you store and transport supplies. What might not seem like a lot of wasted area could mean thousands of extra dollars and square feet with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in over a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. In addition, 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 room can be made to accommodate faster moving objects.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both logical and sequential, by taking the time to trace how precisely product flows in your facility regularly. Roughly 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less staff completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish other jobs rather than having employees doubled up transporting things would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
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 need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more big waste of time is having the same SKU located in multiple locations in the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular location for each specific thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can greatly improve the overall effectiveness within your warehouse.