DC Workday Training

[Dysprosed]

I work in the stores, but randomly decided to see if Workday had some of the trainings available that I assume DC TM's complete. The one that caught my eye first was "Advancing Outbound Quality for RDC's." I worked through it and the most surprising takeaway for me was that goal for label DPMO (Defects per million opportunities) is 8,000, and that the actual measured number is 10,000. This amounts to 1% error rate, but presumably, because each mispicked item affects the counts of two items, not just one, the rate is closer to 2%. This is unfathomably bad and depending on how they're measuring this is actually probably understated. Not only do stores see items with incorrect labels, but we see items with the correct labels, but for the wrong store.

I doubt there are any supply chain or operations managers on this forum, but this is nowhere near to the industry gold standard which is 6 Sigma, i.e. 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

It seems like there is a lot of room for improvement here... Thoughts?

 

[BoxedIn]

Definitely lots of room for improvement. Though with the non-stop hiring DCs have been doing for the last 2 years, a lot of our TMs are either morons or methheads, so I doubt you will be able to coach them into caring about quality.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

@Hal please assist.

 

[InboundDCguy]

The DPMO you’re talking about is for label cancels/purges. To the best of my knowledge, a mispick wouldn’t count against it because that label is shipped. It’s a measure of things that should’ve been shipped but weren’t because:
-the label got lost
-the product got damaged
-the label was damaged/wouldn’t scan
-the product wasn’t where it was supposed to be
-the product fell off of the pallet
-etc.

If there is a DPMO measure for mispicks, then a mispick would count against it based on how many selling units weren’t there and how many selling units shouldn’t have been there. So if you got a carton of 6 units of Clean Breeze Tide but should’ve gotten a carton of 4 units of Clean Breeze Downy, it would count 10x.

 

[Hal]

I work in the stores, but randomly decided to see if Workday had some of the trainings available that I assume DC TM's complete. The one that caught my eye first was "Advancing Outbound Quality for RDC's." I worked through it and the most surprising takeaway for me was that goal for label DPMO (Defects per million opportunities) is 8,000, and that the actual measured number is 10,000. This amounts to 1% error rate, but presumably, because each mispicked item affects the counts of two items, not just one, the rate is closer to 2%. This is unfathomably bad and depending on how they're measuring this is actually probably understated. Not only do stores see items with incorrect labels, but we see items with the correct labels, but for the wrong store.

I doubt there are any supply chain or operations managers on this forum, but this is nowhere near to the industry gold standard which is 6 Sigma, i.e. 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

It seems like there is a lot of room for improvement here... Thoughts?

Yep. Its bad. So bad we each DC has at least 1 or 2 Quality managers, 1 or 2 Continuous Improvement Managers and a senior over them who are dedicated to this process.

6 sigma is not the industry standard. Its the industry goal. I can tell you right now walmart, amazon and all those other companies are all over 3.4 dpmo. Its why amazon is buying all those robots.

 

[Dysprosed]

Not that I want to see jobs go to robots exactly, but this is just the sort of thing that feels appropriate, especially given the impact. Stores don't catch even the smallest fraction of mispicks. And you can't even do mispicks for repacks. Who knows how much of what was supposed to be in the repack is actually there...

 

[Luck]

Not that I want to see jobs go to robots exactly, but this is just the sort of thing that feels appropriate, especially given the impact. Stores don't catch even the smallest fraction of mispicks. And you can't even do mispicks for repacks. Who knows how much of what was supposed to be in the repack is actually there...

You absolutely can audit overpacks contents. They are listed as line items in the trailers BOL. It just isnt worth doing 99% of the time.

 

[Hal]

You absolutely can audit overpacks contents. They are listed as line items in the trailers BOL. It just isnt worth doing 99% of the time.

Especially considering that the average ssp value is so small its not worth it.

 

[Dysprosed]

Especially considering that the average ssp value is so small its not worth it.

I actually wonder about that... OTC(over-the-counter, pharmacy) is one the top sales dollar departments in my store. d. 245 and 094. I suspect that is the same in most stores. Most of OTC is replenished through repacks, and consequently, it's where I spend the most time manually auditing. In OTC, there are a higher number of overall items with overstated counts than in areas that see more casepack replenishment. So an improvement in this process seems like it may actually be worth it.

EDIT: I don't know where myDay pulls its last delivery date info from, but half the items in my store don't have one. I've heard it suggested that if the item was last delivered X number of days ago, myDay won't show it, but I've seen that shown false with items with delivery dates long past when no delivery date items clearly must have been received. What gives? Okay I admit this is really a tangent, but I am perpetually curious.... Does it have anything to do with being in a repack?