Archived Backroom Organization?

[SomeGirl]

Hey. Every store is heavily different when it comes to not just the sales floor but also the backroom. I am going to be taking over as lead for a backroom relay within my district and I am wanting to get some opinions and ask how your store's backroom is organized. For example my main store we just finished our backroom relay and did a mimic of the sales floor exactly. I would love to do that at this other store however it is a much older store and their backroom is not nearly the size I would need to do that, especially for market.

If you aren't sure what I am talking about by organization I am talking about so you have your aisle's for each fill group, but each fill group you can have it further organized for example in HBO1 with deodorant, you have a single section for Women's Deodorant and then a section for Men's Deodorant. similar for Shampoo/Conditioner in HBO2, for those store that sale wine and spirits you have half an aisle for Wine, and then half an aisle for spirits (hard liquor) so that they are combined when pulling and makes it faster to push on the sales floor as you are not having to go back and forth and retrace steps a million times.

 

[BackroomBear]

That's a dangerous game for location accuracy. Ex: Gillette sport scent looks exactly like fresh scent to the untrained (lazy) TM, (old spice, secret, speed stick, you get the point). Teach them to sort as they pull into 3 tiers a bit to help the push. The effort to maintain the sort may exceed the value, and time is ticking for true BRTMs/TLs to oversee that.

 

[glo]

You locate vendor backstock? Must be a pain to help them when they come in to work their product.

Anyway, I think it would look good to the eye, but would create problems for location accuracy, like @BackroomBear said. Imagine how many scents there are for each of the deodorant brands, and how similar each bottle of head and shoulders looks. Also, what problems would it solve?

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Our wine is located. The vendor works with the Ctl, & does a great job. HBO stuff, rubber bands are your friend, due to end to end.

 

[SrTLall]

We have a few aisles that are divided up into separate departments, but it sounds like you'll just be decreasing productivity by trying to divide aisles by class. TMs who are backstocking are going to spend too much time trying to figure out where each item goes within the aisle. There are some classes that get their own sections within aisles because it's more productive. For instance, we have all loofahs stowed together because they all need similar wacos. Same with cereal, binders, bulletin boards, towels, etc.

 

[anathema]

Right, not a huge benefit to getting that anal with organization, especially when there's probably larger scope issues to deal with. How's your brand in general? Backroom full? Low and pro, to the left? Partial casepacks everywhere, stuff in plastic, etc.

It's very hard to micro-manage an aisle that much, especially now that there's more and more fingers in the cookie jar.

 

[mammoth]

Right, think about as soon as your SFTL tears down a full endcap of women's deodorant. Whatever section you tried to designate as the women's deodorant section will now bleed over into the men's section. At that point it'll become very difficult to maintain. You're over thinking things. Usually, fillgroups encompass maybe 5-10 aisles on the salesfloor. That is already organized enough. Whoever is pushing just needs to know their product, aisles, and work efficiently.

 

[Firefox]

The only aisles that we combine in my backroom are HIPA/LAMP, SPRT/BIKE/LUGG, BUCK/HCNDY, and PHAR/COSM. We don't have any sorted sections within any of our aisles aside from a section of BATH that is dedicated to towels. I feel like simplicity is key when maintaining BLRA, because if you try to subdivide different sections of each aisle then you expend a whole bunch of effort into maintaining that organisation without much benefit.

 

[SFSFun]

From someone with a small backroom, let me tell you that what you are proposing is a bad idea. We need to be flexible because you just don't know how much space any given section will need a week from now. You could plan on a certain section needing a certain amount of space, but all it takes is a killed salesplanner to screw that up. And don't forget about all of the random products we have with dual locations in seasonal throughout the year.

We are so tight on space, that we condense fillgroups and clear out sections over 3 different stockrooms just to make room for the influx of school supplies for BTS.

As a side note, what is a backroom relay, and how the hell do stores in your district have backroom payroll available to send TMs to other stores to reorganize stuff?

 

[CrimsonRaven712]

I'm just going to chime in with what everyone else is saying. Trying to micromanage your backroom will just lead to more issues. It is just best to keep aisles to one fill group or set of fill groups and leave it at that. The most detail we go with separating certain things in specific fill groups would be keep wrapping paper in one section in STAT and trying to keep most of the pads/tampons towards the end of the PHAR section.

I think the thing you should be focussing on with how people backstock is to keep them from sticking a few small items in a large waco. Those almost always will get lost in all the other stuff that gets tossed into the large wacos. In my store we had over 20 items in one waco, which can really kill your pull time.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

From someone who had a backroom with 98+ accuracy for a very long time (years).

You will never be able to break the backroom down by class. Product levels ebb and flow, and it's just not reasonable to try to do it, you'll end up packed in some areas and light in others.

As for setting up your backroom, don't mirror it by the sf. Keep like areas together like food, but areas like toys, you always want to have the next few aisles as lighter fillgroups like sport, so when 4th qtr comes, you can cannibalize that aisle for toys, same is true for office and stat. Generally I put shoes and office together, and when bts set, I put all of the shoes in the steel with a forward block (large piece of wood so they don't go back, stack them all up. Easy to just pull out a box so no shelves needed) and filled that aisle with bts . Made it easy to purge as well without wrecking your regular office and stat aisles.

If you can, try to dedicate at least 5 ground pallet spots for water and your sale paper. I had 1 regional water (deer park, Poland etc), 1 market pantry, 1 sale paper towel, 1 sale tp, and one for whatever paper moved the fastest. Backroom checked them during breaks and added them to pulls via subt regardless of if it was in a batch or not.

Get 1 or 2 rolling metro racks and 8slot Waco them out and locate them. This is for your small cosmetics like polish, makeup, etc. Roll it to the floor during truck stock and the person who pushes it can rubber band it and backstock it as they go. Saves time and effort. Just park them down the aisle while not in use.

Make sure you create a reasonable solution for pillows, they fucking suck to backstock. I made large opening shelves in the aisle and tied thick stretchy nylon across so you could mash them in and remove them easily (imagine the Wal-Mart style ball pit).

I went through probably 15 relays and if you do it right, you will set the store up to do well. If you drop the ball it will destroy them.

As far as pull efficiency, we always parked 3 tiers every 2 aisles and pulled into them. Fillgroups don't matter imo - even less so now with e2e because people will be pulling specific areas.

Good luck!

 

[SomeGirl]

As a side note, what is a backroom relay, and how the hell do stores in your district have backroom payroll available to send TMs to other stores to reorganize stuff?

The backroom relay is basically the "planogram team" for the backroom. I don't know how often it is done as ive only been backroom for a year now but the shelving/wacos get moved, more wacos, sometimes less to adjust to the ever changing products and what is needed to stock them cleanly. The store is actually under a remodel and we are utilizing hours from that.

From someone who had a backroom with 98+ accuracy for a very long time (years).

You will never be able to break the backroom down by class. Product levels ebb and flow, and it's just not reasonable to try to do it, you'll end up packed in some areas and light in others.

As for setting up your backroom, don't mirror it by the sf. Keep like areas together like food, but areas like toys, you always want to have the next few aisles as lighter fillgroups like sport, so when 4th qtr comes, you can cannibalize that aisle for toys, same is true for office and stat. Generally I put shoes and office together, and when bts set, I put all of the shoes in the steel with a forward block (large piece of wood so they don't go back, stack them all up. Easy to just pull out a box so no shelves needed) and filled that aisle with bts . Made it easy to purge as well without wrecking your regular office and stat aisles.

If you can, try to dedicate at least 5 ground pallet spots for water and your sale paper. I had 1 regional water (deer park, Poland etc), 1 market pantry, 1 sale paper towel, 1 sale tp, and one for whatever paper moved the fastest. Backroom checked them during breaks and added them to pulls via subt regardless of if it was in a batch or not.

Get 1 or 2 rolling metro racks and 8slot Waco them out and locate them. This is for your small cosmetics like polish, makeup, etc. Roll it to the floor during truck stock and the person who pushes it can rubber band it and backstock it as they go. Saves time and effort. Just park them down the aisle while not in use.

Make sure you create a reasonable solution for pillows, they fucking suck to backstock. I made large opening shelves in the aisle and tied thick stretchy nylon across so you could mash them in and remove them easily (imagine the Wal-Mart style ball pit).

I went through probably 15 relays and if you do it right, you will set the store up to do well. If you drop the ball it will destroy them.

As far as pull efficiency, we always parked 3 tiers every 2 aisles and pulled into them. Fillgroups don't matter imo - even less so now with e2e because people will be pulling specific areas.

Good luck!

Thank you for your feedback. Cosmetics has been moved into the elctronics stockroom and books out, i have been told that is going to be a corporate thing for more security on high theft items. The relay is already half done but the previous person running it messed up majorly and I am taking over it. My job is mostly clean up the mess they did such as renumbering aisles due to some being moved around and doing two more moves (PHAR, SPRT/BIKE, LUGG)

Because of where things are now once moving those i will be able to split Wine/spirits over as it should be as there is always more spirits then wine.

To the one who asked about backstocking vendor stuff we do not. Wine is technically a gray area as it comes off of the trucks and we usually stock it ourself but they do work with team members to pull some.

 

[SrTLall]

Make sure you create a reasonable solution for pillows, they fucking suck to backstock. I made large opening shelves in the aisle and tied thick stretchy nylon across so you could mash them in and remove them easily (imagine the Wal-Mart style ball pit).

I just changed the top shelves at the back of the aisle to open stock and we cut a hole in the bottom of the box to pull out the eaches. Since we changed to doing manuals for all of our batches, only 3-4 are pulled at a time and it works faily well.

 

[SFSFun]

The backroom relay is basically the "planogram team" for the backroom. I don't know how often it is done as ive only been backroom for a year now but the shelving/wacos get moved, more wacos, sometimes less to adjust to the ever changing products and what is needed to stock them cleanly. The store is actually under a remodel and we are utilizing hours from that.

Ok that I can understand, and I've taken part in that at another store as well.

To the one who asked about backstocking vendor stuff we do not. Wine is technically a gray area as it comes off of the trucks and we usually stock it ourself but they do work with team members to pull some.

Some stores have wine as a strictly vendor item. We do not get any on our trucks; it all comes in through one of the beer vendors (but with a separate PO number).

 

[Me1]

How did you "label" each section in the backroom. I am actually trying to do this in my backroom but have not figured out the best way to label each section.