Within the distribution center, active floor supervision can help the supervisors to enhance performance 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 identify which employees might require more training and which may 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 very important; finally, you can address issues as they arise.
Determine the Utilization of Space: To start with, you must determine the cube utilization in you workplace, making sure to examine how much empty space is situated near the ceiling. Implementing higher racks and narrow aisles and particular forklifts which operate in those types of environments could greatly increase how you store and transport materials. What may not look like much wasted space can translate into thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few 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. Furthermore, if you have many half-full pallets which 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 could be made to accommodate items which are moving faster.
How is the Flow of Product? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by taking the time to trace how exactly product flows through your facility regularly. Around 60% of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can probably have less employees completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move staff to finish different other jobs instead of having workers doubled up moving things would get more work out of the same amount of staff.
Review how the order filling method is occurring. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not need things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another huge 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 every particular item 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 could greatly enhance the overall efficiency inside your warehouse.