Active floor management enables managers to improve performance within the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to frequently walk the floor to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to identify which workers may require more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These frequent visits can be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a managerial position; it shows you consider the floor and everything which occurs 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: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Check if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and specific forklifts which work in those types of environments can greatly increase how you transport and store materials. What may not look like a lot of wasted area can mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with some adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for example, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than 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 using valuable space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, much space can be made to accommodate faster moving things.
How is the Flow of Product? Make the time to trace how precisely product flows through your facility regularly. Check to see if the flow is logical and sequential. Roughly 60 percent of direct labor in the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You could probably have less personnel completing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete various other tasks instead of having workers doubled up transporting items would get more work out of the same amount of personnel.
Review how the order filling procedure is taking place. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one location and orders do not require things of this mix, pickers are wasting time. One more huge waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many locations inside the warehouse. Get the workers used of going to a particular place for every particular thing so that they are just looking in one area and not traveling through the warehouse checking more than one location for the same item. These small changes can vastly enhance the overall effectiveness inside your warehouse.