2023 New pilots?

I don't think it was bad at lower volume stores, but for busier stores, someone else would have to cover the DBO's days off, or the DBO would spend their entire shift pushing truck and not have time for the other tasks, which kind of defeated the purpose of the role
DBOs may have worked if there were more of them I think. If they didn't have to cover an entire department, let's say, but rather sections of it.
 
DBOs may have worked if there were more of them I think. If they didn't have to cover an entire department, let's say, but rather sections of it.
I typically would do a “B” Team member for every 2 areas that would work 4 days part time and cover the days off. So I’d have a Chem person and then a Pets person that would work 5 days a week and then a Chem/Pets tm that worked 4 days a week. That seemed to work pretty well and still gave consistency to those areas. The issue with low/mid volume stores though is that if you were sticking with DBOs and use chem as an example, with zone, truck and priorities your average workload is only like 5 hours so unless they’re doing something else they’re likely only getting 25-30 hours a week. You also need more Tms to have DBOs for every area which also results in lower hours. The benefit to a process team that just pushes you can take the average time for a truck, give everyone 8 hours and schedule enough people to get it done. A proper DBO system would result in more people and less hours where it seems this will allow a more reasonable amount of people and let them work more hours.
 
The benefit to a process team that just pushes you can take the average time for a truck, give everyone 8 hours and schedule enough people to get it done.

When I first started we had teams, and when you finished you helped adjacent areas, then we all went and finished food if there was any left. None of that now...food guys who stick around are hard to find.
 
When I first started we had teams, and when you finished you helped adjacent areas, then we all went and finished food if there was any left. None of that now...food guys who stick around are hard to find.
Yes…. It was a much more efficient way of doing it.
 
I typically would do a “B” Team member for every 2 areas that would work 4 days part time and cover the days off. So I’d have a Chem person and then a Pets person that would work 5 days a week and then a Chem/Pets tm that worked 4 days a week. That seemed to work pretty well and still gave consistency to those areas. The issue with low/mid volume stores though is that if you were sticking with DBOs and use chem as an example, with zone, truck and priorities your average workload is only like 5 hours so unless they’re doing something else they’re likely only getting 25-30 hours a week. You also need more Tms to have DBOs for every area which also results in lower hours. The benefit to a process team that just pushes you can take the average time for a truck, give everyone 8 hours and schedule enough people to get it done. A proper DBO system would result in more people and less hours where it seems this will allow a more reasonable amount of people and let them work more hours.
I agree it is a much more versatile system imo but does require the operations team imo to be successful. Without a dbo the small things suffer. Dbo was flawed for lower and medium volume stores as it wasnt justifiable to have people in every area every day.
 
The entire idea of a "Dedicated Business Owner" was nonsense to begin with. If my business is plastics, how can I be dedicated if I'm constantly being pulled to help with fulfillment? Or backup cash? And I only work 40 hours, at most. That means other people are also in plastics, messing it up. Even when I have a light workload and finish early, I don't get to spend the rest of my time zoning or making my area look nice; I get sent off to another area that I do not own.

It was never going to work, at least not as it was written on paper. Outside of the whole "ownership" thing, giving someone 5 things to do, but only enough time to do 2-3 of them means that they're going to prioritize 2-3 things. More often than not, those things were pushing and backstocking. That means pricing didn't get done, zoning didn't get done, revisions and salesplanners didn't get done, audits didn't get done. If it was a big truck or a double, then pulls likely didn't get done either. No ETL or SD is going to let vehicles of push build up until they had to call the DSD or OD to cancel a truck, so vehicles were always the priority over everything else. At least until OFOs were in the quadruple digits and the DSD sent an angry email, then the focus was pulls until there were too many vehicles and pallets of freight in the backroom to even try to start a truck, then it was back to vehicles again.

Maybe there were stores that had the hours and staffing to actually implement Modernization by-the-book and manage to succeed, but they were clearly few and far between. Even when Modernization was just a rumor, everyone who knew better would tell you that specialty teams are the way to go. You want pricing to get done? Have a pricing team. Planograms? Have a presentation team. Audits? An instocks team. It's not rocket science that giving people just 1 thing to focus on means that they can, yes, focus on that one thing and actually finish it. Even outside of retail, it's beyond obvious. There's a reason why we have doctors, lawyers, laborers, etc... that specialize in one area of their field rather than everyone trying to do everything.
 
The entire idea of a "Dedicated Business Owner" was nonsense to begin with. If my business is plastics, how can I be dedicated if I'm constantly being pulled to help with fulfillment? Or backup cash? And I only work 40 hours, at most. That means other people are also in plastics, messing it up. Even when I have a light workload and finish early, I don't get to spend the rest of my time zoning or making my area look nice; I get sent off to another area that I do not own.

It was never going to work, at least not as it was written on paper. Outside of the whole "ownership" thing, giving someone 5 things to do, but only enough time to do 2-3 of them means that they're going to prioritize 2-3 things. More often than not, those things were pushing and backstocking. That means pricing didn't get done, zoning didn't get done, revisions and salesplanners didn't get done, audits didn't get done. If it was a big truck or a double, then pulls likely didn't get done either. No ETL or SD is going to let vehicles of push build up until they had to call the DSD or OD to cancel a truck, so vehicles were always the priority over everything else. At least until OFOs were in the quadruple digits and the DSD sent an angry email, then the focus was pulls until there were too many vehicles and pallets of freight in the backroom to even try to start a truck, then it was back to vehicles again.

Maybe there were stores that had the hours and staffing to actually implement Modernization by-the-book and manage to succeed, but they were clearly few and far between. Even when Modernization was just a rumor, everyone who knew better would tell you that specialty teams are the way to go. You want pricing to get done? Have a pricing team. Planograms? Have a presentation team. Audits? An instocks team. It's not rocket science that giving people just 1 thing to focus on means that they can, yes, focus on that one thing and actually finish it. Even outside of retail, it's beyond obvious. There's a reason why we have doctors, lawyers, laborers, etc... that specialize in one area of their field rather than everyone trying to do everything.
100%. You nailed it.

Everyone here was losing it (and continued to hate it) when Modernization and DBOs became a thing. But, people tend to hate change, so I'm guessing that's why the complaints.
 
I agree it is a much more versatile system imo but does require the operations team imo to be successful. Without a dbo the small things suffer. Dbo was flawed for lower and medium volume stores as it wasnt justifiable to have people in every area every day.
It was justifiable. There was no payroll for it.
 
I don't think it was bad at lower volume stores, but for busier stores, someone else would have to cover the DBO's days off, or the DBO would spend their entire shift pushing truck and not have time for the other tasks, which kind of defeated the purpose of the role
Hmm, my store is definitely not high-volume, but what you describe is what I do for most of my shifts. Depending on the area, some DBOs also do fulfillment, price change (for other areas), or help push truck in other areas. If a DBO has SPs or revisions/transitions to work on, they'll usually do that. But the practice of one person having ownership over all aspects of one area seems to be inconsistent. Started out better than it's turned out to be. Still think it's not a bad idea in that consistency can help boost speed and accuracy.
But I guess this shouldn't be surprising - seems like Target ideas are usually better in theory than practice. Having a hard time thinking of one that's actually worked out well. Maybe changing from the ad signs that folded into the plastic shelf strip to ones that stick instead - those are pretty good, although sometimes they leave a residue that attracts dust and make the plastic get sort of grimy. Kind of pitiful that that's the best I can come up.
 
I've heard certain stores are piloting a new inventory system using Target team members instead of rgis/wis. There's a store in my district starting it next week, they wanted people from other stores to go there, I declined.
 
I've heard certain stores are piloting a new inventory system using Target team members instead of rgis/wis. There's a store in my district starting it next week, they wanted people from other stores to go there, I declined.
It's not stores piloting it it's an internal inventory team that goes to different stores and leverages tms to do the inventory. It was supposedly piloted around hq area and the numbers where much closer so they expanded the pilot. I know there's 2 etls in my area doing about 45 targets from February to october.
 
I know the last two years we had rgis come in and they did the gm side while apparel used their equipment and we dis it ourselves at my store. And gm tms used their stuff to do the backroom. Idk if other stores have played with this.
 
The quality of RGIS/WIS employees has gone downhill the last couple years. And that's saying a lot considering they've always been...... questionable at best. Inventory numbers have suffered along with this; they skipped entire sections last year at my store. We have scanned parts of style ourselves the last two years to ensure accuracy. My district is part of the internal inventory process this year, I think the first store(s) started this week and it will continue on into the spring/summer.
 
I know the last two years we had rgis come in and they did the gm side while apparel used their equipment and we dis it ourselves at my store. And gm tms used their stuff to do the backroom. Idk if other stores have played with this.
Same for us. Last pre covid inventory they had so few workers we helped in GM too.
 
I've heard certain stores are piloting a new inventory system using Target team members instead of rgis/wis. There's a store in my district starting it next week, they wanted people from other stores to go there, I declined.
Piloted last year, rolling out this year to 1/3 of the stores to test different ways to run it and lead the process. All stores will be self count by next year except certain remote stores as they’re working out how to supply 60+ Tms to stores that aren’t near other stores. My district is doing it and we’ve already done a couple stores and it’s way smoother. Definitely a learning curve so the first 1-2 are slower but on average Tms scan the same units per hour that WIS does.
 
Piloted last year, rolling out this year to 1/3 of the stores to test different ways to run it and lead the process. All stores will be self count by next year except certain remote stores as they’re working out how to supply 60+ Tms to stores that aren’t near other stores. My district is doing it and we’ve already done a couple stores and it’s way smoother. Definitely a learning curve so the first 1-2 are slower but on average Tms scan the same units per hour that WIS does.
Interesting.

So if you are a TM that has to work overnight are the only pay that extra $1?

Our store currently has some overnight TMs because of the remodel so maybe they will do it?

Thing is if there is only five or six of them.
 
Piloted last year, rolling out this year to 1/3 of the stores to test different ways to run it and lead the process. All stores will be self count by next year except certain remote stores as they’re working out how to supply 60+ Tms to stores that aren’t near other stores. My district is doing it and we’ve already done a couple stores and it’s way smoother. Definitely a learning curve so the first 1-2 are slower but on average Tms scan the same units per hour that WIS does.
My group is doing one of the pilots for this and they want 5 TLs and 1 ETL to train the store teams of each store to do inventory. If it's a red store the team shows up a few days before to help prep as well. On inventory day they set the pace for the scan/audit team.
 
My group is doing one of the pilots for this and they want 5 TLs and 1 ETL to train the store teams of each store to do inventory. If it's a red store the team shows up a few days before to help prep as well. On inventory day they set the pace for the scan/audit team.
When do they actually do the inventory?

After closing?
 
Back
Top