MEGATHREAD 2018-2019 Store Modernization Megathread

[SigningLady]

I love that pog. It's mine every reset so I either get two days and have time or one day and pptl owes me big time.

Same here! I haven't let anyone else set it in years.

 

[Expect nothing]

TL told me TMs have to write their own reviews this year. Ok, well since I haven’t gotten anything other than the top (outstanding and whatever that new shit is now) then they should have no problem with me continuing the trend. I’m assuming this part of the changes or modernization. I haven’t read about it on here, unless I overlooked it.

Confirm/deny?

What ?????? Where did you hear that never going to happen ?!?
When I was a team lead it was the worst ever and such a waste of time copy paste every year just changed a few metrics ....

 

[greatteam]

Sounds like a TM was promoted to TL and didn't understand the self review process.

 

[BoxCutter]

We have only 3 computers at TSC, 1 in the Fixture Room, and 1 in Receiving. Good luck getting all TMs to do their self-assessment reviews in a timely fashion.

 

[Go2TL]

Under my stores current way of doing things, most are going to take longer now. Clean, set, pull, push, and backstock. Pulling and pushing are not counted into the hours regardless of what anyone says. Best practice still says that. Add in backup cashiering, getting carts, etc and you're over the time.

All this is part of the reason we are now behind.

If anyone can show or explain that the time to pull and backstock are included in the adjacency calendar, please enlighten me.

It states in best practice that pulling or backstocking is NOT INCLUDED. But we are told to do it anyway.

I also proved to my store that the Tie/Batch process is flawed as well. A new pog fill on a newly set planogram does not pull everything out of the backroom. We have to use AUDIT or EXF just to get the freight located in the backroom pulled. I had a team member pull 3 times to fill 1 aisle. Took her twice as long than the adjacency calendar stated for it to be set. Then we have to backstock any overstock from the Inbound team or from Auto's being pushed by the backroom team. Yes we still have a backroom team who still can't get their work done just like the Inbound team. You want to know why everyone is behind? It's because people need to care but they don't. It's still every man for themselves mentally. Until we work together, this is never going to work.

The upcoming Beauty transition manual even states that pulling and backstocking is not included for setting the planograms. I'm not sure who they think is going to do it. I'll be too busy trying to set and move freight to its new location.

 

[Frontlanegirl]

While assisting guests of course.

I would write down guests positive feedback and go from there.

 

[Shani]

And dragging a U-boat up and down an aisle while the store is open is silly. We are blocking the guests from entering the aisle & BUYING items.

:head desk:

It would work great before the store opens. Or maybe during the first hour of business.

"Corporate wants nothing in the main aisles" I was told. But then why are there tons of those shopping basket displays and racks of chips and DVDs and whatever other crap they decide to put on rolling shelves all in the middle of aisles? Because guests can shop off them, probably. 🙄 Well, they can shop off my U-boat, I'll tell them the prices...

The U-boats block so much space in the aisles and there isn't enough room for the U-boat, me, and a guest with a cart. Plus the guests always complain about it. Nobody whines about it when I'm in the main aisle because there is plenty of space for guests to walk on either side of my U-boat.
My ETL gave people who push repacks permission to keep them in the middle of the main aisles because repacks are a fucking mess and it would be a pain in the ass to pick through the boxes looking for everything for one aisle at a time. If they came sorted it might be a bit more tolerable, but they aren't and none of us have time to sort them.

Our new STL who starts in a week came for a visit a couple weeks ago and told me I needed to keep my U-boat in the aisle too. I explained why I'd been given permission. He said the person who does those repacks at his store picks through them like I just described and it saves them time. Well, that's great for them, but it doesn't work for me. I decided to humor him and give it a try. As soon as I did, I had guests whining at me about being in the way and I felt too cramped trying to work around people in our narrow aisles. Nobody bitches at me when I stay in the main aisle so I went back there. But he'll be starting soon and I fear I'll be stuck trying to put the U-boat in the aisles. Unless I can convince my ETL to convince him to let me stay where I am. (I wish.) I could see if I wasn't getting my repacks done on a regular basis and they said I needed a new method, but unless truck arrives late, I finish my stuff every day.

 

[seasonaldude]

Our new STL who starts in a week came for a visit a couple weeks ago and told me I needed to keep my U-boat in the aisle too. I explained why I'd been given permission. He said the person who does those repacks at his store picks through them like I just described and it saves them time. Well, that's great for them, but it doesn't work for me. I decided to humor him and give it a try. As soon as I did, I had guests whining at me about being in the way and I felt too cramped trying to work around people in our narrow aisles. Nobody bitches at me when I stay in the main aisle so I went back there. But he'll be starting soon and I fear I'll be stuck trying to put the U-boat in the aisles. Unless I can convince my ETL to convince him to let me stay where I am. (I wish.) I could see if I wasn't getting my repacks done on a regular basis and they said I needed a new method, but unless truck arrives late, I finish my stuff every day.

SrTL Inbounds saw me with a Uboat parked on the racetrack and called me out for it. Supposed to go up and down the aisles with it. Told me that I could call him out if the vehicle wasn't sorted well enough to do that. I said, yeah, check it. You're called out. Haven't heard a peep from him since. Haven't gotten better sorted vehicles either. They're actually getting worse.

 

[Llamanatee]

Sounds like a TM was promoted to TL and didn't understand the self review process.

This is a person that just became a TL in the last 6 months or so and this will be this first time doing their self review and handling others.

 

[Signingmitch]

Saw a leader guide.

Anything interesting?

 

[balthrop]

The upcoming Beauty transition manual even states that pulling and backstocking is not included for setting the planograms. I'm not sure who they think is going to do it. I'll be too busy trying to set and move freight to its new location.

the backroom or what is left of us. if you tie the POG there is good chance that the autofill will pick it up and bam, the BR will now be the poor sod to pull the unexpected and rather comparatively gigantic batch. but with out the hours on the clock to pull everything else and will get talked to about their performance.

--
on a side note I should have taken more English and communication classed while in school. bloody nightmare what I did to the English language up there

 

[Signingmitch]

I’m down to 3 team members with 4 hours shifts for all P2 workload, what a joke

 

[seasonaldude]

Apparently my store got dinged hard during the recovery visit for not doing sort and stock exactly how it's supposed to be done and not having inbounds backstock all their stuff. So, we're back to it now. I must say the backroom looks much better. There aren't vehicles piled a mile high with backstock everywhere anymore. We did get high marks for our salesfloor zones. We haven't had a chance to properly zone since though because the zoners are having to "support inbounds" and push freight all night. Naturally, the salesfloor is quickly getting back to December disaster zone level.

If modernization is having a pretty backroom, then I guess it works. I'll give it that much. But, I have a feeling priorities will just be flipped again after our next surprise visit.

 

[Yetive]

Anything interesting?

Not really. Prices go up, of course. On the surface it looked the same.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

Curious for people who've implemented the new sort and stock method. How's it working for you? On paper it seems to work.

We aren’t fully modernized yet, but parts of pp2 we went ahead with the plan. Logistics sorts it and breaks out the repacks, hardlines owns the rest, comes in and pushes truck, pushes the autos, backstocks, then audits. The modernization stuff has been a struggle for the store but taking over these areas has worked beautifully. It’s all about building accountability and incentivizing the new process. We have the same people working the same areas, so by getting things finished and by working cleanly and accurately, they are making their future shifts easier. If they fuck shit up, they’ll just be dealing with it another day. You need to have the right people. One is a long-timer, been with us for 10+ years, another is a young knowledgeable very cross trained TM of 2 years, one is a fairly fresh post modernization TM who was tired of closing, and an other has been around a year and was our go-to person for home innovation etc. On their days off, we have secondary people who get it all done adequately, and those secondary people also stay in the same department so there’s only 2 people pushing pulling and backstocking in an area. As things move more quickly and smoothly, they are going to start helping with their salesplanners, dropping batches to fill any outs (although all the auditing has the outs massively under control), and the final phase for my team will be them maintaining their own backroom aisles and keeping discontinued stuff and price change out of the back room. We’ll lengthen their shifts, and take from backroom payroll to do so for this part. At this point though, we are coming clean on truck by around noon, autos pushed by around 1pm, then they backstock and spend the rest of their shift auditing or zoning. I filled in for one of them today, started an hour before open and had the truck done by store open, autos done by 10, backstock done 20 minutes later, while also dealing with leadership tasks, leaving me 4 more hours that could be used for backroom maintence etc. PS we are a fairly high volume store with above average guest traffic for our volume and we don’t get shit for payroll lol. Payroll for my parts of pp2 was reallocated from logistics, my team is scheduled under hardlines. The cool thing also is I have 4-5 hardlines TMs on the sales floor every single day from open to afternoon, they share backing up and reshop as well. So closers get more time to zone since they aren’t walking into a ton of reshop. With hardlines owning pp2 also means their payroll and their hours are protected too; my team’s hours being cut for January literally meant their shifts are an hour shorter.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

Apparently my store got dinged hard during the recovery visit for not doing sort and stock exactly how it's supposed to be done and not having inbounds backstock all their stuff. So, we're back to it now. I must say the backroom looks much better. There aren't vehicles piled a mile high with backstock everywhere anymore. We did get high marks for our salesfloor zones. We haven't had a chance to properly zone since though because the zoners are having to "support inbounds" and push freight all night. Naturally, the salesfloor is quickly getting back to December disaster zone level.

If modernization is having a pretty backroom, then I guess it works. I'll give it that much. But, I have a feeling priorities will just be flipped again after our next surprise visit.

If the people pushing don’t get it done, it rolls over for them to do the following day. Sacrificing the sales floor for a clean back room is stupid; guests don’t see the back, they fill out surveys about fucked up and empty sales floors though. “Oh but if there’s a visit we’ll get lit up about the back room!”. If log is the issue then they are the ones that need to be addressed, don’t “clean” the backroom by fucking over the sales floor and throwing them under the bus.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

It states in best practice that pulling or backstocking is NOT INCLUDED. But we are told to do it anyway.

I also proved to my store that the Tie/Batch process is flawed as well. A new pog fill on a newly set planogram does not pull everything out of the backroom. We have to use AUDIT or EXF just to get the freight located in the backroom pulled. I had a team member pull 3 times to fill 1 aisle. Took her twice as long than the adjacency calendar stated for it to be set. Then we have to backstock any overstock from the Inbound team or from Auto's being pushed by the backroom team. Yes we still have a backroom team who still can't get their work done just like the Inbound team. You want to know why everyone is behind? It's because people need to care but they don't. It's still every man for themselves mentally. Until we work together, this is never going to work.

The upcoming Beauty transition manual even states that pulling and backstocking is not included for setting the planograms. I'm not sure who they think is going to do it. I'll be too busy trying to set and move freight to its new location.

Backroom TL has been pulling and trapping it for presentation at my store.

 

[No I in Team]

We aren’t fully modernized yet, but parts of pp2 we went ahead with the plan. Logistics sorts it and breaks out the repacks, hardlines owns the rest, comes in and pushes truck, pushes the autos, backstocks, then audits. The modernization stuff has been a struggle for the store but taking over these areas has worked beautifully. It’s all about building accountability and incentivizing the new process. We have the same people working the same areas, so by getting things finished and by working cleanly and accurately, they are making their future shifts easier. If they fuck shit up, they’ll just be dealing with it another day. You need to have the right people. One is a long-timer, been with us for 10+ years, another is a young knowledgeable very cross trained TM of 2 years, one is a fairly fresh post modernization TM who was tired of closing, and an other has been around a year and was our go-to person for home innovation etc. On their days off, we have secondary people who get it all done adequately, and those secondary people also stay in the same department so there’s only 2 people pushing pulling and backstocking in an area. As things move more quickly and smoothly, they are going to start helping with their salesplanners, dropping batches to fill any outs (although all the auditing has the outs massively under control), and the final phase for my team will be them maintaining their own backroom aisles and keeping discontinued stuff and price change out of the back room. We’ll lengthen their shifts, and take from backroom payroll to do so for this part. At this point though, we are coming clean on truck by around noon, autos pushed by around 1pm, then they backstock and spend the rest of their shift auditing or zoning. I filled in for one of them today, started an hour before open and had the truck done by store open, autos done by 10, backstock done 20 minutes later, while also dealing with leadership tasks, leaving me 4 more hours that could be used for backroom maintence etc. PS we are a fairly high volume store with above average guest traffic for our volume and we don’t get shit for payroll lol. Payroll for my parts of pp2 was reallocated from logistics, my team is scheduled under hardlines. The cool thing also is I have 4-5 hardlines TMs on the sales floor every single day from open to afternoon, they share backing up and reshop as well. So closers get more time to zone since they aren’t walking into a ton of reshop. With hardlines owning pp2 also means their payroll and their hours are protected too; my team’s hours being cut for January literally meant their shifts are an hour shorter.

Congratulations on finding a way to have some success. 😎

Now pull out all of your team members and replicate it again with new ones in a defined time limit of about a week. Then measure it for thirty days for continuity and against company standards. There in lies your problem, there are no measurable and sustainable standards. Apparently none were ever developed for this convoluted process.

Most of this, if not all of this Modernization/E2E is subjective to a corporate person's(s') of idea of what should be attainable. It's not a process that can be done with the average team member walking through the door. Even if you utilize the manual, the time frames given will not work under all conditions/if not most given the business model it is to be implemented under.

Having to "rob Peter to pay Paul" with hours from other predetermined task is an example of this. Eventually someone up the food chain will "tinker" with allocated hours and you be out of the hours to get your task completed. Then what? Once again, the business model doesn't match the process.

Then the real problem arises for others when some aggressive DTL or other executive learns of your success and says, "If they can do it, why can't you?" Hello ASANTS how have you been? Another cancer within Target that desperately needs addressing.

I'm not knocking your success. However, it has to be a replicated process before any of us can look to it as an answer to our misery.

Good luck with it and I hope you can keep your team together for a long time.

 

[GlobalTL123]

Congratulations on finding a way to have some success. 😎

Now pull out all of your team members and replicate it again with new ones in a defined time limit of about a week. Then measure it for thirty days for continuity and against company standards. There in lies your problem, there are no measurable and sustainable standards. Apparently none were ever developed for this convoluted process.

Most of this, if not all of this Modernization/E2E is subjective to a corporate person's(s') of idea of what should be attainable. It's not a process that can be done with the average team member walking through the door. Even if you utilize the manual, the time frames given will not work under all conditions/if not most given the business model it is to be implemented under.

Having to "rob Peter to pay Paul" with hours from other predetermined task is an example of this. Eventually someone up the food chain will "tinker" with allocated hours and you be out of the hours to get your task completed. Then what? Once again, the business model doesn't match the process.

Then the real problem arises for others when some aggressive DTL or other executive learns of your success and says, "If they can do it, why can't you?" Hello ASANTS how have you been? Another cancer within Target that desperately needs addressing.

I'm not knocking your success. However, it has to be a replicated process before any of us can look to it as an answer to our misery.

Good luck with it and I hope you can keep your team together for a long time.

Stock goals do not match the amount of freight either. 60 boxes and stock goal is .8 LOL

 

[FinallyFamous]

Anyone that went through remodel/modernization did you receive new fixtures besides white walls like convertibles, quads, my store still has old conv and quads and having trouble ordering new ones to match vmg look

 

[secretBanshee]

We aren’t fully modernized yet, but parts of pp2 we went ahead with the plan. Logistics sorts it and breaks out the repacks, hardlines owns the rest, comes in and pushes truck, pushes the autos, backstocks, then audits. The modernization stuff has been a struggle for the store but taking over these areas has worked beautifully. It’s all about building accountability and incentivizing the new process. We have the same people working the same areas, so by getting things finished and by working cleanly and accurately, they are making their future shifts easier. If they fuck shit up, they’ll just be dealing with it another day. You need to have the right people. One is a long-timer, been with us for 10+ years, another is a young knowledgeable very cross trained TM of 2 years, one is a fairly fresh post modernization TM who was tired of closing, and an other has been around a year and was our go-to person for home innovation etc. On their days off, we have secondary people who get it all done adequately, and those secondary people also stay in the same department so there’s only 2 people pushing pulling and backstocking in an area. As things move more quickly and smoothly, they are going to start helping with their salesplanners, dropping batches to fill any outs (although all the auditing has the outs massively under control), and the final phase for my team will be them maintaining their own backroom aisles and keeping discontinued stuff and price change out of the back room. We’ll lengthen their shifts, and take from backroom payroll to do so for this part. At this point though, we are coming clean on truck by around noon, autos pushed by around 1pm, then they backstock and spend the rest of their shift auditing or zoning. I filled in for one of them today, started an hour before open and had the truck done by store open, autos done by 10, backstock done 20 minutes later, while also dealing with leadership tasks, leaving me 4 more hours that could be used for backroom maintence etc. PS we are a fairly high volume store with above average guest traffic for our volume and we don’t get shit for payroll lol. Payroll for my parts of pp2 was reallocated from logistics, my team is scheduled under hardlines. The cool thing also is I have 4-5 hardlines TMs on the sales floor every single day from open to afternoon, they share backing up and reshop as well. So closers get more time to zone since they aren’t walking into a ton of reshop. With hardlines owning pp2 also means their payroll and their hours are protected too; my team’s hours being cut for January literally meant their shifts are an hour shorter.

Congratulations on getting some of Modernization to work. What I don't see in your list of duties and expectations is the Softlines breakout. How are you handling that?

 

[signingminion]

Anyone that went through remodel/modernization did you receive new fixtures besides white walls like convertibles, quads, my store still has old conv and quads and having trouble ordering new ones to match vmg look

2.0 for style was still mixed. I've not seen 2018 style remodels in a full store so I'm not sure. They stopped and put off these remodels die to backordered fixtures. Your best bet is to order and mysupport to see if they can expedite, track or both.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

Congratulations on finding a way to have some success. 😎

Now pull out all of your team members and replicate it again with new ones in a defined time limit of about a week. Then measure it for thirty days for continuity and against company standards. There in lies your problem, there are no measurable and sustainable standards. Apparently none were ever developed for this convoluted process.

Most of this, if not all of this Modernization/E2E is subjective to a corporate person's(s') of idea of what should be attainable. It's not a process that can be done with the average team member walking through the door. Even if you utilize the manual, the time frames given will not work under all conditions/if not most given the business model it is to be implemented under.

Having to "rob Peter to pay Paul" with hours from other predetermined task is an example of this. Eventually someone up the food chain will "tinker" with allocated hours and you be out of the hours to get your task completed. Then what? Once again, the business model doesn't match the process.

Then the real problem arises for others when some aggressive DTL or other executive learns of your success and says, "If they can do it, why can't you?" Hello ASANTS how have you been? Another cancer within Target that desperately needs addressing.

I'm not knocking your success. However, it has to be a replicated process before any of us can look to it as an answer to our misery.

Good luck with it and I hope you can keep your team together for a long time.

The problem is Target thinks by raising base pay, they can expect all team members to be able to deliver what my handpicked squad of the store’s best can. Like any new process or TMs, if I changed out the team for existing TMs who aren’t a part of the process, they’d struggle initially, but I think they could come clean more often than not within 2-3 weeks. A team of new hires? 6 weeks at least.

I say it’s more replicable than you think because once you get over the initial struggle of fixing the sales floor and fixing the back room and auditing it all, it’s not that bad because the pulls are small and don’t pull stuff that’s backstock, the truck is smaller and they don’t send as much backstock, and backroom stays empty which means less work back there and more hours for inbound and sales floor. My bed and bath aisles are literally 90% empty and the sales floor has very minimal outs. Stationary is consistently zoned and pushed properly. Overpush in kitchen is non existent. 6 weeks ago the opposite was the case for all of that.

What I’m about to say will be VERY unpopular but “modernization” can work if you think outside the box and get over the initial shit-show. Find a way to make it work for you, because if you can get over the initial struggle, it pays dividends. With less payroll than before, we now have more time to take care of things, and maintain the progress that we make. I sent my team to help other areas a few days ago. How’s that for having a global team?

Congratulations on getting some of Modernization to work. What I don't see in your list of duties and expectations is the Softlines breakout. How are you handling that?

I’m hardlines TL, but softlines has actually been running smoothly end to end for months now, with the only hiccup being price change. Team of 1-2 come in to breakout etc, team trickles in starting an hour later and they are assigned a zone to push as well as take care of it’s reshop, we don’t let reshop sit, it’s usually worked immediately after pickup from guest service. The team zones problem areas throughout the day as well so the closers don’t walk into a shit show. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of details, but that’s the gist of it, I don’t hear much about it these days since it’s been working so it hasn’t been being talked about lol

 

[busyzoningtoys]

The next hurdle for my store is now that we are having regular success running in the modernized way, we need to evolve that because even though we have a clean back room and finish the trucks at a reasonable time and have low outs etc, the devil is still in the details. Pog problems are an issue, as are salesplanners that get set way late or never. This will resolve itself as I continue to train my team on presentation stuff and begin assigning them salesplanners to set. They’ve already done a few successfully but we aren’t to the point yet where they have time to do everything else and be setting stuff. The closing team still needs work, and a couple of them have figured out where to stash reshop where we won’t notice if for a day or two. Food is our stores Achilles heel right now, and their struggle is the team just isn’t up to the challenge that our payroll presents. My progress in my area has slowed a bit because payroll is so tight that I’m now pushing an area, like my team. I don’t mind as it’s temporary, and I’ve gotten so much closer to my team with them seeing me doing the exact same tasks as I ask them to do, demonstrating that it’s possible to accomplish. I’m not the fastest pusher, backstocker, zoner, and I remind them of that and that if I can do it, they definitely can. Oh, and set your custom blocks so that they align with the areas by TM, to avoid the time wasted when one gets another’s product in their push.

 

[FredPanda3]

My store got a review about empty shelves which seems to be pretty common with this system, also a lot of guests hate the remodel...