I found out 2 weeks ago that flow was going to have market split off, with other areas at a later date. I found out today that softlines/baby hardlines and electronics are going to split off at the same time. I am on the softlines/baby hardlines flow team. 3 of the 5 people on our team were in a meeting for over an hour with 5 execs discussing this. We will be going from 5 to 8 hour shifts and changing our breakout among other things. Our DC is not going to the palletized system, so our repacks will not be sorted any differently before they hit the store.
Currently, we pull the pallets, which are basically sorted as Shoes, all hanging, ladies accessories/socks/intimates/one spot, girls/boys/infants and men's/ladies folding. We sort, detrash and hang on z's or place in carts that go to designated areas and then work them. We usually are finished with the breakout by 9am. One of us comes in at 6 to set up and the rest of us come in at 6:30
The system they want us to change to after the unload (because we are a 6am, and they will be scheduling us at 7 or 9), is that we will take pallets in the backroom, transfer repacks to vehicles by number, separate the casepacks onto a different vehicle and then take them one area at a time, detrash and stock. So basically they want us to take a vehicle filled with boxes, go to an area, go through every box, detrash/stock, and then move on to the next area and repeat. We are not required to come clean before we leave (which is going to drive me crazy). It just seems so different than the process we have been using. I understand the concept of touching an item as few times as possible, but with this new process, we will be pulling one item out of a box at a time, detrashing/stocking. It just seems that although the item will be touched less, it seems there will me more steps taken to get the item to the location.
Has anyone tried this process with softlines yet? Has it been successful? Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions that we can try to make the process more streamlined as we start on this new process?
