MEGATHREAD 2018-2019 Store Modernization Megathread

[OPINION] How do you feel about these changes?

  • I like them.

  • I dislike them.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Ashfromoldsite said:
Haven’t heard anything about it. Your store is saying a phase 3 is coming?
Maybe phase 3 is “psych, fooled ya” and put everything back the way it was. Lol
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Considering they put every presentation team member back in their former role and made presentation a thing again, I feel like this is closer to reality than we might think lmao.
 
Tinkersdamn said:
Heard a rumor that more stockroom changes are coming soon. Anybody know anything about branding your stockroom aisles?
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I think we already started this which is ridiculous and seems to have few if any benefits to most departments. Dividing each 4 foot section of the chemical backroom aisle into types of cleaner is a waste of time. 4 feet of floor cleaner. 4 feet of air fresheners. Etc.
 
Tinkersdamn said:
Heard a rumor that more stockroom changes are coming soon. Anybody know anything about branding your stockroom aisles?
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My backroom aisles have always been divided my dept/class. I like it for pog fills, and when pulling batches, it’s easier to organize on the tub. I feel it’s more efficient. So when I pull grc 1, all my peanut butter ends up on the tub together, then condiments, dressing, etc. makes it that much easier when pushing.
 
unknown said:
I think we already started this which is ridiculous and seems to have few if any benefits to most departments. Dividing each 4 foot section of the chemical backroom aisle into types of cleaner is a waste of time. 4 feet of floor cleaner. 4 feet of air fresheners. Etc.
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We had been subdividing aisles of our stockroom for many many years. It works pretty well when properly executed as it saved a ton of time. By keeping all the floor cleaners together in the stockroom, it means they will be pulled together in autofills/CAFs/etc and thereby placed together on a cart. This reduces the amount of walking back and worth when working the pull on the floor.

Literally the first thing I did when I became backroom TL in 2003 was subdivide the grocery backroom aisles. Prior to taking the position, the grocery stockroom was 10 aisles of everything jumbled together regardless of fill group. Me and the ETL-Logistics spent a full week purging and sorting it into the layout I had proposed. It worked so well, we started doing it to the rest of the stockroom (where feasible).
 
So when you get more than one section worth of freight for peanut butter, where do you put it?
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We would use nearby space until we had spare time to adjust the sections dedicated to different items. Of course, the days of having payroll to use on housekeeping projects is long gone.

Targetron said:
Pulling will be easier when you have all the exact same looking product mixed together in backroom locations. Modernization logic
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Customize the profile in a way that helps prevent exact same looking product from being backstocked together. When I subdivided the grocery stockroom, I changed the profiles in a way that was VERY different from what the company said the profile should be. The profile for the grocery stockroom in 2003 was completely stupid and didn't have near enough wacos for the loose stock and we had a ton of wasted space for case stock. On top of that, half of the waco space was using 12 in waco boxes and that doesn't work for the number of small items in grocery.

Pay attention when backstocking. If you have to put more than 1 DPCI in a waco, make sure you don't put the exact same brand of goods together (like Del Monte canned corn with Del Monte canned peas) and use items that are easily distinguishable at a glance (different sizes, brands, etc).
 
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Sloth said:
If we had more control over what we received, yeah. This would be great. But we don't have that kind of control, where we know we'll always just have 10-15 extra cans of a specific type of soup in the backroom. I can pull up our entire inventory and find hundreds, if not thousands of instances where our OH count is much greater than our OTL, more than one or two casepacks worth of extra freight.

Anything we do on our end is going to be a waste of time. Rather, it's going to cost more time than what we're able to spend because there are more important things taking that time instead. This all needs to be fixed at the source first. DCs need to be fixed first and stores need to be given greater control over their inventory.
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I wholeheartedly agree. I've complained several times on here and probably hundreds of times while I worked for Target that the logistics process would be FAR more efficient if we stopped overloading stores with junk we don't need. I'll repost a couple of my experiences below:

Backroom81 said:
Contrast this with a real life example of our current system. I received 30 bikes of just 1 DPCI during the holiday season. Ok, it's the holidays and it's going in the ad. It's a little ambitious as we've never sold that many of that particular bike before in previous seasons but whatever. Our bike builder makes sure to display them prominently and...only slightly more sales than usual. Than we find out we're the only store in our district to even receive them. A major metroplex and 1 store gets 30 ad bikes and everyone else has to tell prospective buyers to drive to us?

As a result, we sold about half of them and it took the entire following year to sell the rest (while still getting them in from the DC). How many bikes would have been sold if they had allocated the available stock in a way that wasn't stupid? How many people said "screw driving halfway across the city, I'll just get a bike from Wal-Mart instead"?
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Backroom81 said:
The absolute worst example I can think of is canned vegetables at my store. One year, we received 4 pallets of assorted canned Del-Monte for the holidays. That by itself is no big deal, it's the holiday season and we can expect to sell those. In the latter half of the season, they kept coming in and replenishing those sales and we still had 3 pallets total by the end of January. That by itself should be no big deal. Using a replenishment system that wasn't retarded, we should be able to make sure our o/h counts stayed up to date and sell through them eventually without further replenishment from the DC. After all, if you have literally 1500 cans of cut green beans in location and the o/h is accurate, obviously the system should take that into account right?

Nope. They kept fucking coming in all year; faster than we could sell them. By the next holiday season, we had 4 pallets of vegetables in location and received another 4 for the holiday allocation. We had tried multiple times to sweep them back but couldn't. Since they came in as palletized assortments, they didn't come with the original plastic wrap that the casepacks do. They came in as loose traypacks arranged on the pallet which was then shrink-wrapped. Since sweeps required all original case packaging, they got sent right back. It took our regional VP showing up and actually looking in the backroom for more than 30 seconds to make it stop.
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I've said many times that the first step of Modernization should have been fixing the amount of freight sent to stores. If I have 30 boxes of 1 DPCI of cereal and we get a truck every single day, there's almost no reason I should be receiving another case until I sell most of that 30. Period.
 
in order to brand an aisle in the Backroom you will need a massive amount of space, depending on the department, GRC 1,2 & 3 will need full on Asiles, Softlines will need to cut their footprint in the backroom massively.

the amount of time, energy, and physical labor needed to set this up to be successful will be a complete and utter waste of time. no one and I am so 100% sure on this no store will give the time to backroom function to keep and maintain this "branding".

Now if there was a full backroom team independent of the insane Store Kool-Aid fest then it might be able to happen but you will need to let the logistics side of the house burn hours like crazy to get the brand and keep it.

I do not see any of these things happening. It will be half arsed like we've done for the last year or two. our core is rotting away and soon™ it will all fall down

--

soon being relative, could be a month it could be fourth quarter etc.
 
Sloth said:
So when you get more than one section worth of freight for peanut butter, where do you put it?

We tried this a while back and it didn't work out well. We also had one section for peanut butter and jam, but we had too much peanut butter and jam and as a result, each WACO had 7+ DPCIs in it, often with 2-3 kinds of peanut butter or jam that looked exactly the same, but had different DPCIs. This led to our BRLA plummeting, TMs getting angry at being coached for finding errors, and eventually backstocking the peanut butter and jam in different sections with empty WACOs to keep things more organized -- so kind of the opposite of what the branding was meant to achieve.

You get different amounts of freight for things throughout the year. That's just retail. Demand changes, and so must supply to match it. So you're either going to have sections that are jammed full of product to keep with branding, causing errors all the while, or you're going to have to constantly change sections around to match the amount of freight you get, which is, frankly, a waste of time.

Or for the chemicals example, our air freshener freight is constantly going up and down, depending on the season. Outside of that, we could fit it all into one, maybe two sections. But when we start getting more seasonal freight, we need double the amount of space for it all. So where do we put it? It won't fit in the existing section, and all the other sections are already taken. Do we put it in the next section over? Then we fill it up, and when we get freight specifically for that section, there's no room for it all.

It's a decent idea on paper, but we have no control over how much product we see in the backroom. It isn't like the floor, where we can set capacities and thresholds. The backroom is for excess, and you just can't control how much excess you're going to have. So how on Earth do you set aside specific sections, each with their own capacity, for random, uncontrollable excess freight?

When we do pulls, we have a U-boat with 3 shelves and a bunch of repacks. We sort when we pull. Peanut butter and jam? Goes in repack #1. Baking soda, flour, etc.. ? Repack #2. Noodles? Repack #3. It doesn't take anymore time to do it this way, and the end result is the exact same as what you're doing -- but I'm willing to bet we get through our backstock much quicker since we can throw product wherever there is space for it.
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As far as what to do when we get more than one section’s worth of peanut butter, or anything at that, we just go up and over and keep it as tight as we can. So it might not be exactly section per section at all times, but we definitely have a system. We have to keep our capacities/sfq right for this to work. That way we can set ourselves up to control what we can in regards to open stock. Fill the floor of course to keep that stuff moving out of our back room. We get through our backstock pretty quickly because my team knows their aisles well, we know when to expect to have more backstock than usual. Food holiday coming? Endcaps changing in 4 weeks? Expect backstock. Mini seasonal changing? Upcoming CL endcaps have food? Expect backstock. First section of every aisle is for transition (we do sneak some fast moving cases in there lol), so that helps. We sell what we can and control the cases we open, and we sweep those those residual cases back as often as possible. If I walk the backroom aisles and see more than a casepack worth of open stock, I know we did something wrong at some time. Of course this happens when it’s time to change an endcap and the open stock from demerch can be ridiculous. But I make sure we keep an eye out for that just by being aware of what’s on the endcap, how long it’s going to be there, and what’s not selling from it. So some may not agree with or understand it, but it works quite well for us.

And we definitely don’t have a problem getting though our backstock. We push 40 cartons an hour, including backstock. BRLA is always green. We’re fine.
 
Ashfromoldsite said:
Haven’t heard anything about it. Your store is saying a phase 3 is coming?
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Yes. As I was trying to resign yesterday, explaining to my etl that modernization is poop and I certainly don’t want to deal with it during 4thQ, he told me he thought the first two phases have gone super dooper great. Delusional much? Apparently September is when they plan on kicking 4thQ off with Phase III of hell in a timely fashion, again.

FYI all ETLs, when trying desperately to talk a frustrated tm into staying in horrible working conditions, don’t tell them that this shit is about to get worse. Oddly enough, it’s not a very inspirational sales pitch.
 
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Sloth said:
If we had more control over what we received, yeah. This would be great. But we don't have that kind of control, where we know we'll always just have 10-15 extra cans of a specific type of soup in the backroom.
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This is why we have over 90 sheet protectors for a binder when floor capacity is only 5 or 10. They're filling up an entire shelf in the backroom and the DC sends us at least a box every 3-4 weeks. Even before BTS season started
 
Our current focus is getting as much product out of the backroom and on to the sales floor no matter how you do it. Put so much product in a sales floor location that it bleeds over to the next price point? No problem! Put a product in a completely different product POG? No problem! Other TMs and Leaders not doing a store sales floor tie when flexing to other aisles or areas? No problem! Stacking product so high that a 6' TM standing on the base deck can just about reach it with their fingertips? No problem!

When E2E/Modernization started we were told stores would typically have over 40% of stock sitting in the backroom. The company wanted to get it down to 5%.Well, HQ, the best way to do that is stop sending more crap then we can properly fit on the sales floor!
 
ShortTM said:
This is why we have over 90 sheet protectors for a binder when floor capacity is only 5 or 10. They're filling up an entire shelf in the backroom and the DC sends us at least a box every 3-4 weeks. Even before BTS season started
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When we set a POG, we will have a location that the system says can fit 132 of an item, when in reality it holds just 12!

Then store TMs have to go and fix the capacity for each item in the POG?

How is the logic of having a few TMs in the POG department at HQ fix the capacities before they are sent out instead of each and every store having TMs do it (not that there are any hours for it) being lost on those in charge? Do the math corporate!
 
Send me a sign said:
Does anyone have any insight as to wtf “Phase III” of modernization is? Is this a new level of hell?
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Phase III is the implementation of shock collars and digital timers connected to each u-boat. The shock collar will deliver a Fast and Friendly™ reminder to the TM that they're failing to meet Target's estimated time to unload said u-boat. This will reoccur with increasing voltage every 30 seconds until the u-boat is completed.
Phase IV involves flying drones and rubber bullets.
Phase V is...well, it's best not to talk about Phase V.

Also, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
 
Sloth said:
So I guess the next questions are.. :
  • What volume is your store?
  • How many trucks do you take per week? RDC, FDC?
  • What size are those trucks?
  • How many TMs do you have? In Food & Beverage?
  • How many hours do you get?
  • How many SF aisles do you have? How many backroom aisles?
  • How many sections in those aisles?
  • How involved is your leadership?
  • How experienced are your TMs?
  • How many devices/resources do you have? U-boats?
  • How large is your unload area?
  • How much steel space do you have?
  • Does your store have SFS? OPU? DriveUp? Shipt?
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- B volume
- 4-5 RDC, 3 FDC (pro/meat/deli/dairy/frozen every delivery. (Just mentioning this because I know some stores get only frozen on some deliveries)
-RDC ranges from 1700-2500 casepacks. Either way market gets no less than ten FULL ASS uboats and 1 flatbed. For FDC, anywhere from 700-1000 cases, I’d say average around 700.
- 8 food and bev TMs (not including me) 3 Dry TMs, 4 pfresh TMs, and 1 who mostly closes here and there. She’s only available three days a week.
- We get anywhere from 217 (lowest) to 230 hours. This is not nearly enough. The week I just wrote we were actually allocated 254 hours, but ALL of my endcaps are changing and I have 2 revisions 🤷🏻‍♀️. I will say it’s gotten better because the last time we had to set all of our salesplanners, we were given 229, that was a horrible week.
-SF aisles are B6-37 & 40-42, BUT 6-13 are open market, pfresh, bunkers, etc. then, 14-18 are frozen and 1 meat/cheese. 19-37 is dry. Then 40-42 (backwall:water, bev, beer, frozen, dairy)
Besides 4 coolers/freezer, we have 3 aisles of light duty shelves with 10 sections on each side.
- The only leader besides me that is involved in any way is my GM leader and she is awesome. The last few months with her has been so refreshing. Before the leadership change, I didn’t have an ETL for 6 months. It was rough. But she just expects consistent communication and for me and my team to know out shit. And we do.
- my team was solid but I just had one quit. I’ve been developing another one so we moved him to another workcenter for this reason (he was hard to give up, but I’m glad he’s moving up and learning). So now we have two newbies which has presented its own challenges. Growing pains I should say. But we will train them just as well as we trained everyone else. Same expectations. Same standards. Also performance managing one. I tried everything. She’s just not fast enough. Great attitude though and I think she’s smart. If she doesn’t want cashier, she needs to step it up or she’s gone. So will probably be hiring soon 😑
- idk how many devices we have in the store but every one of my TMs has one when they are working. Can’t do their jobs without one! Only leaders have devices designated. I give mine to my team if they need it. It’s almost never an issue. NOW, are these devices fast?
No freaking way. Can’t speak on total number of uboats in the store but for RDC unload we have 1 flat bed and 7 uboats for my food custom blocks, but we obviously have to switch them out when full. Never can we finish one before unload is done.
- our unload area is dummy small. Can’t fit a body in between uboats and it’s a bitch to switch out full uboats during unload. I hate it soooo much.
- as far as steel space, I usually keep about 7 pallet spaces of water under the bulk steel (also a bitch to deal with because it’s impossible to pull out a pallet of water without moving at least 3 uboats first.) Other than that, I’ll have a pallet of capris sun at times. Also a pallet space for stuff I bulk out before sweeping it back. It gets very challenging when it’s time for big transitions. We have the smallest Backroom in the district, by far.
- Yes we have OPU, SFS, DriveUp and Shipt

Hope this answered all your questions.
 
balthrop said:
in order to brand an aisle in the Backroom you will need a massive amount of space, depending on the department, GRC 1,2 & 3 will need full on Asiles, Softlines will need to cut their footprint in the backroom massively.

the amount of time, energy, and physical labor needed to set this up to be successful will be a complete and utter waste of time. no one and I am so 100% sure on this no store will give the time to backroom function to keep and maintain this "branding".

Now if there was a full backroom team independent of the insane Store Kool-Aid fest then it might be able to happen but you will need to let the logistics side of the house burn hours like crazy to get the brand and keep it.

I do not see any of these things happening. It will be half arsed like we've done for the last year or two. our core is rotting away and soon™ it will all fall down

--

soon being relative, could be a month it could be fourth quarter etc.
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Did backroom at highest volume store, they had their backroom completely done like this. It is so much better for pulling and stocking efficiency it was great. You are right in that it requires a massive amount of space, since I tried to convert a B volume store to the same kind of detailed orgranization and the waco space just didn't allow for it. It doesn't take too much time to set up since you can slowly wait for purge/pulls to filter out the stuff that doesn't belong but ultimately you have to solve the space problem.
 
I am just saying that I think for some stores that modernization is a joke. I was at 2 different Supers yesterday in CO. The first was a little messy in a few areas and had lots of visual out-of-stocks in housewares, beauty, and possible out-of-stocks in men’s on tables (looked picked over in terms of sizes). The 2nd 1 was even more messy and had issues with visual out-of-stocks, but had the UP & UP Lotion I like. The men’s department was slightly better looking. For me the dry grocery area was the superstar in both stores, as they were clean and had few it any visual out-of-stocks, while housewares and softlines was the problem child.

On a side note I can see in one area why the traditional grocery stores are doing better than Target. The produce departments at these 2 stores was well stocked, but seemed messy in some places (the apple bins just had product tossed in them vs. being stacked nicely with the steam ends to the left). Also their wet rack looked nice, but seemed to be lacking in many of specialty items groceries like King Soopers, Albertsons, or Safeway carry. This fixture seemed, as though it had not been shopped too much and by this time at my new/current store (employer) we are seeing the after church crowd in produce, but there were very few people shopping there at these stores. I also found the prices especially on berries to be very good, while my store often puts these items on sale (sometimes as loss leaders) and these sales drive our traffic. Hard not to compare stores to mine.

Did end up buying some lotion and snacks at one store and will going to another today to get shampoo, as my travel toiletry kit is empty.
 

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