Archived Back to School and Overnight Flow/Backroom

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MrX

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.back to school is killing us at my store. We havent come clean since BTS started. My store's overnight process starts at 10pm and most people are scheduled until 6. There may be 2-3 scheduled until 7. We have no more than 14 people working and our trucks are around 2000-2400. Always callouts too.

We have lots of pallets and carts of backstock and push in the backroom. Its a mess. There at least 6-7 carts from the red repack breakout as well.

Anyone else struggling with back to school and coming clean? Any advice???

Thanks in advance.
 
During BTS and the holiday season you should re-define what it means to come clean. With Target's payroll and team structure, coming clean seems to be difficult on any regular day but near impossible during BTS. At my store we focus on making sure all of the "backstock" for BTS is organized. Considering how busy it is during BTS, I don't see the point in locating everything in the backroom when it needs to be pulled pretty much all day. Last year we left everything unlocated in the backroom but in tubs and on pallets in a specified BTS bay. We were very strict with keeping everything organized by aisle and like items with like items. LODs had to walk more frequently to make sure the TMs were doing this. This way the team could easily pull out the tub onto the floor, replenish what they need, and then stick it right back on the BTS bay. Maybe something similar would help at your store?
 
I was pushing bts today and noticed a bunch of empty dump bins for the up&up erasers and glue sticks...scanned them and we had 350 of each stowed in the back...why. Big waste of time to stow all that shit when it’s on sale for fiddy cent and the guests are mobbing bts all day erryday. Last backroom shift I worked somebody tried to give me a few tubs of bts to stow and I said nah son, watch this and ended up pushing 75% of the filler paper to the floor.

Constant callouts are annoying as fuck though I agree. I would be hastling your etl about purging the dead weight and getting some real help hired in.
 
I agree with keeping like items together, but not bothering with backstocking most items. The truck and backroom have partnered up to have like a Crayola tub and cart, binder/ folder tub, pen and pencil cart, etc that gets worked every day, and if more is needed it'll get pulled
 
MrX said:
.back to school is killing us at my store. We havent come clean since BTS started. My store's overnight process starts at 10pm and most people are scheduled until 6. There may be 2-3 scheduled until 7. We have no more than 14 people working and our trucks are around 2000-2400. Always callouts too.

We have lots of pallets and carts of backstock and push in the backroom. Its a mess. There at least 6-7 carts from the red repack breakout as well.

Anyone else struggling with back to school and coming clean? Any advice???

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
How many call outs do you have? Our trucks average 1800-2200 and I am lucky if I have 10 people scheduled for 5 hour shifts each. We are a 6am process store so we are pushing and guest servicing at the same time. No we do not come clean but I would think with that many people and being overnight we would.
 
thanks for the replies. we do not backstock the bts items. we try to keep them organized, and easy to access or the morning crew. Its just hard because of our other freight as well.

We get at least 1-3 callouts a night....more on weekends....even more during pay weeks. We have a couple of new hires, but one quit already.

I am all over the place....on the truck line.... on the floor.....in the backroom..... doing whatever i can to help the team


its just frustrating, as I am sure it is for all of you.
 
MrX said:
thanks for the replies. we do not backstock the bts items. we try to keep them organized, and easy to access or the morning crew. Its just hard because of our other freight as well.

We get at least 1-3 callouts a night....more on weekends....even more during pay weeks. We have a couple of new hires, but one quit already.

I am all over the place....on the truck line.... on the floor.....in the backroom..... doing whatever i can to help the team


its just frustrating, as I am sure it is for all of you.
Click to expand...
Not having bts in location should and provably is affecting your flex fill acuracy. My store is also overnight process with an off-site too. Just the other day I sent myself 2 pallets of office repacks to off-site because I was tired to see them on flats and tubs. And is best to have it on location and come in pulls then off and coming in flex fill. We are a push all process and it’s definitely more time consuming also with 3 doubles this week, and fucking 5 double next week. It’s not even Christmas. Ohh and we don’t have no trucks days as I heard about other stores.
 
Back to school is way worse than Christmas.

Reason 1

The person doing the buying has zero control over the list. They don’t get to pick what they need or how much they can afford to spend. At Christmas, they got to pick who they were buying for and how much they would spend.

Reason 2

They have to shop with their children. Teenagers mostly, who refuse to like anything at all that their parent might also like.

Alternately with college stores, the child insists they need things the parent thinks they don’t need. We get no resolution on who was right.

With gifts that drama happens at home, not at the store.

Reason 3

Some teachers are morons and put shit on the list that doesn’t exist. One year my local school district required all third graders to have a yellow covered composition book, which was not in the assortment that year. Another year they found a seasonal item during tax season that wasn’t in the back to school assortment. Happens every year.

Reason 4

In lots of areas the parents don’t get the list until the first day of school, so they have to shop all at once. I can plan ahead for Christmas, but how would I know that my kid also needed a box of green pens ahead of time?
 
LearningTree said:
Last year we left everything unlocated in the backroom but in tubs and on pallets in a specified BTS bay. We were very strict with keeping everything organized by aisle and like items with like items. LODs had to walk more frequently to make sure the TMs were doing this. This way the team could easily pull out the tub onto the floor, replenish what they need, and then stick it right back on the BTS bay. Maybe something similar would help at your store?
Click to expand...

Yeah. That's a great idea, but would never work at my store.

The tubs would be come major shit piles and dump bins.

And I walked our BTS area, today. It is terribly under stocked. As in the stuff is most likely sitting in the BR somewhere, and not pushed to the piece on the sales floor. We're screwed.
 
can't touch this said:
I was pushing bts today and noticed a bunch of empty dump bins for the up&up erasers and glue sticks...scanned them and we had 350 of each stowed in the back...why. Big waste of time to stow all that shit when it’s on sale for fiddy cent and the guests are mobbing bts all day erryday. Last backroom shift I worked somebody tried to give me a few tubs of bts to stow and I said nah son, watch this and ended up pushing 75% of the filler paper to the floor.

Constant callouts are annoying as fuck though I agree. I would be hastling your etl about purging the dead weight and getting some real help hired in.
Click to expand...
The problem we have if we purged we would not have anyone to replace them. Even the new hires are not staying long or showing up.
 
MrX said:
.back to school is killing us at my store. We havent come clean since BTS started. My store's overnight process starts at 10pm and most people are scheduled until 6. There may be 2-3 scheduled until 7. We have no more than 14 people working and our trucks are around 2000-2400. Always callouts too.

We have lots of pallets and carts of backstock and push in the backroom. Its a mess. There at least 6-7 carts from the red repack breakout as well.

Anyone else struggling with back to school and coming clean? Any advice???

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...


I just quit my position at Target, but I worked logistics. It has been an absolute nightmare at our store. We are a UHV store, with a large University in town. Basically, the DC will drop all of the extra crap on our store. Since the remodel last year, we have lost 40% of floor space for softlines, and our storage space has been greatly reduced. This means the backroom is an absolute mess. We have a system, wherein, we can unload in 45 minutes or less, but we are no longer an overnight store. Everything has slowed down, because of so many obstructions. We never come clean, unless it's a 1400 piece truck. We had such a great system, but there has been much turmoil at our store. We lost our STL to cancer and one of ETL's just lost his eight year-old daughter to cancer. What a brutal year for our store.
 
SFSFun said:
Clear up excess backstock by making creative BTS/BTC endcaps and displays.

View attachment 5882
Click to expand...


I would have broken it up. BTC - A 4' section each of four different types of plastics [crates, hangers, sterlite drawers, and on sale (?) tubs w/lids]

or gone with BTS. A 4' section each of notebooks, plastic pencil cases, loose leaf paper, and maybe Crayola products (on down ward slant shelves with fencing, with one product per shelf.)

ETA: The current display is a waste of space. The crates can be "tripled up" and nested inside each other with another one on top.
 
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I still like bts more because reaching over a 3’4” kid to stock folders is way better than arguing with some last minute dingus who “NEEDS” a specific string of lights on December 22nd
 
We have BTS items in the audit daily. Not backstocking is only going to get more sent to you.
 
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