MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[MOVEbatch]

If things were clean, I would be under hours, but when your backrooms are shit show and you constantly have to hunt for things tied three isles over from where you actually find them on the floor that just sucks up the time. And softlines, oh softlines. it's just all a shit show. Same dress in three places no size run in any of them and none repeat none of the tables are tied to anything. so good luck! One dress I found the small in one place, the medium and large in another the X-small in the third place. No XL anywhere, well I did find them in the bottom of a cart after looking for 40 minutes. One of the TL's was horrified but shakes her head and goes "this is what they want."

Or when it wants you to pick something from an assortment container that's way up in the steel and there are four pallets of Easter stuff in the way that you have to move to even get the WAVE in there. Swim is currently a huge shit show and good luck finding the right plain black swim bottoms in under five minutes, even with an RFID scan.

I have batches I can pick in under 30 minutes, and then I have batches that take an hour. It all depends on things being where they're supposed to be and/or in something resembling organization.

 

[calimero]

And why does the move app sends you to the highest location in the backroom
To get one pack of crayon in a box of 24 , and asks you to pull those 24 , but you only need one ...
but there is another location in a Waco in a lower location with 3 in there ??? Or even on the sales floor !
It would have taken me 30 seconds to get it, but I had to move 4 flats , 2 3 tiers and a z rack , bring the highest ladder that was locked in 10
Aisles away , I had to move a pallet to get it out the of the way ... and the wave was being used on the floor ...only waisted 20 minutes for a pack of crayons ...
And let’s talk about those swimsuits that are hanging in the backroom , you need to get the wave for them ..and none of them
Are hanging by style by the way !

 

[LearningTree]

And why does the move app sends you to the highest location in the backroom
To get one pack of crayon in a box of 24 , and asks you to pull those 24 , but you only need one ...
but there is another location in a Waco in a lower location with 3 in there ???

If you're leadership isn't around just open up a barcode generator on google. Type in the WACO location and pretend to pull from that location. Switch over to mywork and actually pull from the easier WACO and then while you're in mywork backstock back into the 1st WACO. Proceed with caution though: you will get bitched out if you're caught doing it. I don't even let my TMs see me doing it and I'm an ETL. I tell the picker to move on to the next item while I'll I work on the current one.

 

[LearningTree]

@Thunderbird1956 I'm talking about OPU. My STL does not give a shit if an order drops after midnight. Someone still needs to pick it "on time".

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@SrTLall we are consistently at 90% plus of forecast and still under allocated hours. We're relatively good on pick times, but packing is definitely where we struggle. We had some people that really needed to be managed out years ago that pack at half the speed of the seasonals we had. We should be at a rate of at least 20-25, but we average about 16-18.

But we also do OPU without allocating the hours for it unless we're behind on pack.

 

[SFSFun]

@tmap98 with those numbers Target would be giving you 27.7 hours a day on the low end and you're getting it done in 15. That's super impressive. If you're doing 30 in a half hour you're packing at at rate of a box every 1.4 min, less if you account for breaks. The only time we are under 35 min per cart is if it's all backroom locations. Two on floor locations tends to increase our time to about 40-45 min, and a softlines heavy batch or mostly floor locations tends to be over an hour. It takes a minimum of 3.5 min to cross the floor, 7 min round trip for us.

Unless your store is a complete mess, it should not be taking anywhere near that long.

My store schedules in a similar way as @tmap98 and I agree that 30 minutes per batch on average (with minimal INF) is very reasonable as long as the store is in good shape.

Once your team knows what they are doing, they should be using no where near the hours that are allocated. I'm actually surprised Spot hasn't reduced the forecast algorithm yet. My team spends quite a bit of time helping push/pull/backstock.

They tweaked it last year in Q3. They way it's set up now is 6 hours of payroll for every 100 units to pick and pack, not including OPU. For stores where everyone knows what they're doing, it's more than enough. For others, it's just barely doable.

@Thunderbird1956 I'm talking about OPU. My STL does not give a shit if an order drops after midnight. Someone still needs to pick it "on time".

Unless your STL is working overnight or checks myalerts for missed goal notifications in the morning, they would never know the difference if you don't pick them after close.

 

[Bosch]

If you're leadership isn't around just open up a barcode generator on google. Type in the WACO location and pretend to pull from that location. Switch over to mywork and actually pull from the easier WACO and then while you're in mywork backstock back into the 1st WACO. Proceed with caution though: you will get bitched out if you're caught doing it. I don't even let my TMs see me doing it and I'm an ETL. I tell the picker to move on to the next item while I'll I work on the current one.

I do something similar if it is a location we can't access or I know there are a lot of open stock. I can't move 20 vehicles to get one package of paper towels out a case pack when I have a flat of them waiting to go backstock.

 

[JohnSith373]

Move: Pull a 24 each casepack of Easter candy
Move: 1 needed for ordered

I’ll backstock it back in place and grab one from seasonal or ignore it entirely and ‘burn’ a pull by googling a barcode generator. It’s entirely stupid that even though there is a ton on the sales floor (at least 10) it makes me pull a casepack with an excessive amount for only 1 needed for order.

@tmap98 with those numbers Target would be giving you 27.7 hours a day on the low end and you're getting it done in 15. That's super impressive. If you're doing 30 in a half hour you're packing at at rate of a box every 1.4 min, less if you account for breaks. The only time we are under 35 min per cart is if it's all backroom locations. Two on floor locations tends to increase our time to about 40-45 min, and a softlines heavy batch or mostly floor locations tends to be over an hour. It takes a minimum of 3.5 min to cross the floor, 7 min round trip for us.

Most of my team now ignores backroom locations and instead grabs the salesfloor first. Personally, I pick softlines first, then it’ll guide me through hardlines and market, and backroom locations tend to be last. If there isn’t an item on the salesfloor, I don’t have to walk back to the backroom to check backstock and push vehicles because I’ll be grabbing backroom locations. If I followed how Move wants me to pick them, I would be in the backroom twice in the same batch; Once for backroom locations and twice for items I can’t locate on the salesfloor. My store is a mess

This process makes our batches now 30-40 minutes.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@JohnSith373 We tried the picking from the floor first method and found cycling through all the MOVE backroom locations actually took about 5 min longer per cart.
We have multiple backrooms and a really long store so even though I've tweeked the pathing I teach creating your own pathing. I generally teach lookup non softlines NOPs in the drop down list to see if they are new or what to keep a lookout for when you're walking around then doing backroom 1, hardlines right by the backroom, softlines (softlines NOP), checklanes, INT (INT NOP), HBA/CHEM, backroom 2, then back to backroom 1 for NOPs. We either get a lot of repacks with web only or a reasonable amount of returns with web only so when the person who usually takes 30 min is working on a cart for an hour and has 6 INFs it was trying to track those down.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@SFSFun Interesting, we're budgeted 7.4 hours per 100 and it's that way for all enhanced stores in the surrounding districts as far as I can tell.

I wonder if the extra 48 seconds per item is based on listed square footage of enhanced stores.

 

[SrTLall]

If you have to alter best practices because your store is failing, you're just SOL.

 

[JohnSith373]

If you have to alter best practices because your store is failing, you're just SOL.

Softlines push is days behind, we have hanging softlines in every section of the backroom, and backstock carts in front of every aisle. My store is a mess, our INF ranges from 8%-16%.

 

[Bosch]

Softlines push is days behind, we have hanging softlines in every section of the backroom, and backstock carts in front of every aisle. My store is a mess, our INF ranges from 8%-16%.

You in my store?

 

[OneArmedJesus]

I have no clue why there's 5 of us scheduled for the Monday after Easter

 

[Itemmerge]

I'm really jealous of everyone here who has a team. SFS at my store is me. I have a backup person for my days off. Shifts are only 6.75 hours a day. Way too much work for one person...

 

[SFSFun]

@SFSFun Interesting, we're budgeted 7.4 hours per 100 and it's that way for all enhanced stores in the surrounding districts as far as I can tell.

I wonder if the extra 48 seconds per item is based on listed square footage of enhanced stores.

I was getting my numbers from what our group ops director said during Q4, and I'm pretty sure it's how our forecasts add up, but I'll double check. I keep forgetting you're at an enchanted store though. I'll look at some of the nearby ones and see what their forecasts are like.

I have no clue why there's 5 of us scheduled for the Monday after Easter

Because nothing is stopping guests from placing orders on Sunday when the store is closed. On Monday you'll have to pick all of Sunday's orders.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@SFSDan we are forecast for over 100 hours on that Monday. We have at least 17 people scheduled every hour once we're open. Basically every single SFS person is scheduled, plus some that are fully SFS crosstrained we have for days like this, and 5 additional that are scheduled for an extra one or two hours before their sales floor shifts. There hasn't been a day like this since 4th quarter. The hours for the rest of the week are rough though.

 

[hufflepuff]

You in my store?

Sometimes I almost believe you're in mine.

 

[Bosch]

@SFSDan we are forecast for over 100 hours on that Monday. We have at least 17 people scheduled every hour once we're open. Basically every single SFS person is scheduled, plus some that are fully SFS crosstrained we have for days like this, and 5 additional that are scheduled for an extra one or two hours before their sales floor shifts. There hasn't been a day like this since 4th quarter. The hours for the rest of the week are rough though.

Yeah they are less than half of normal. Less than half.. This is going to be fun.. Not..

 

[BigEyedPhish]

Yay, I get to set all the hunter Signing, then bail SFS out...... Then get told my job doesn't exist anymore.

Happy, Easter.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@Itemmerge Sometimes a team doesn't make it better. Our backroom is a weird shape and we have "6 pack stations," but the design was mostly shoved in a corner and not well thought out at all. On top of that they had not changed since SFS started. I've had a lot that I've had to do to fix 3 years worth of issues. I could do more if I had hours I could schedule to throw at it, but I've got to fit it in with the hours I've got.

The biggest issue is the design means people trip over each other when packing.

 

[MOVEbatch]

I'm really jealous of everyone here who has a team. SFS at my store is me. I have a backup person for my days off. Shifts are only 6.75 hours a day. Way too much work for one person...

Same here, though I get 8 hour shifts. Lately, with more hours, they've been scheduling another person to SFS for a few hours each day, but it always seems that that person ends up getting pulled to some other area deemed more important. I don't get any help with the pick until it's 1:00 and there are still 80 DCPIs left and then we're just rushing around in a panic to get done on time. Would be a lot nicer if they'd just give me help in the morning, or, hell, even schedule some people early morning or evening to get a jump on the pick. Instead it's all 90% up to me and they act like the solution is to just simply work faster. Maybe I could try picking while wearing rollerskates?

 

[OneArmedJesus]

I was getting my numbers from what our group ops director said during Q4, and I'm pretty sure it's how our forecasts add up, but I'll double check. I keep forgetting you're at an enchanted store though. I'll look at some of the nearby ones and see what their forecasts are like.


Because nothing is stopping guests from placing orders on Sunday when the store is closed. On Monday you'll have to pick all of Sunday's orders.

@SFSDan we are forecast for over 100 hours on that Monday. We have at least 17 people scheduled every hour once we're open. Basically every single SFS person is scheduled, plus some that are fully SFS crosstrained we have for days like this, and 5 additional that are scheduled for an extra one or two hours before their sales floor shifts. There hasn't been a day like this since 4th quarter. The hours for the rest of the week are rough though.

Makes sense tbh, my store has been knew too shut us off

 

[Thunderbird1956]

Instead it's all 90% up to me and they act like the solution is to just simply work faster. Maybe I could try picking while wearing rollerskates?

Use the timing here as justification so you can speak to the situation. You'll also be giving the LOD more information to make decisions. If it's just you and you know picking at one minute per item is one of the best rates across multiple stores all with low INF then if you start at 8 you won't be able to do anything over 375 at 5% INF to pick as realistically orders are still going to drop in there and there aren't that many times the same DCPI goes in the same cart and it's more likely to be spread out over multiple orders so you can't gain efficiency that way.

Unless they don't care about INF the rule I use is no more than 3 min for a Hardlines and 5 min for a Softlines per INF. That means if your stores average INF is higher than 5% your max should be adjusted depending on how hard they want you to look and what your store looks like. To stay green 4% more would be the next step I'd use which would be 15 units or 45 minutes reduced from your pick times in a best case scenario. There is no reason to spend gobs of time looking for something that hasn't been received or auto pulled in 15+days in the backstock line. So to stay green on a rough INF day and solid effort you need to walk in and ask for help from the LOD if you're between 330-375, it is short sided if they think you have those numbers and things aren't still forecast to drop in. At my store I have to account for the speed of the people, some really are faster than others averaged out over multiple carts so to be conservative I'd use 217-247 as my average then check the hour by hour forecast to see how much is scheduled to drop in between 8am and 1pm and reduce or add based on a combination of who I have scheduled and what the forecasted morning load is.

Our daily forecast is always baseloaded a minimum of 16 hours before 1pm, but variability in daily forecast means sometimes we have 2 people scheduled in the morning, sometimes we have 5, sometimes we have 8, and sometimes like the day after Easter we have 17.

 

[SFSFun]

There is no reason to spend gobs of time looking for something that hasn't been received or auto pulled in 15+days in the backstock line.

That really drives me nuts when I see other TMs looking for items in places where it couldn't possibly be. Or when the LOD suggests I look there. "No I didn't dig through the repacks on the line, because those came in today and this item was last received 2 weeks ago." Or "no I didn't dig through that backstock that hasn't been touched in 3 weeks, because it was last received yesterday."