MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

I seriously hope Target has learned some lessons from last year when they go ahead with these 750 caps for regular stores. My district was part of a "peak intensity test" last year where we ramped up to 500 orders per day while other normal SFS stores were only doing 300. And this test didn't exactly go very well.

They basically just gave us a folding table to use as an extra packing station and said good luck. We didn't hire anyone who lasted, and relied on the POG TMs to boost the size of our team. It started to go downhill the day before Thanksgiving when the closing team left with all of the carts full of orders needing to be packed. It just kind of snowballed from there until we ended up a few days behind (<30% picked/packed on time).

Corporate most definitely knew we were struggling from the weekly conference calls and frequent visits. At one point we had a TM drive down from corporate (several hours away) to status with us and they just ended up helping pack all day before driving all the way back that night.

To do it right this year, they need to take a serious look at all of the stores and figure out who can handle how many orders. The stores with the best metrics and larger backrooms can handle the highest amount of orders. And stores with 500 or more at peak will need a separate TL to plan things out properly. The team will be bigger than the backroom team, so it's unfair to expect the BRTL to be able to do a great job handling both SFS and BR.
 
Moosechives said:
Yeahhhhhhh, I don't think we'll be getting 3000 orders a day. lolol Needless to say, we'll be behind for the next few months, as we already have been since May anyways so no difference to me.
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Yeah i agree we could barely handle a 1000 orders a day so 3000 would be way too much.... we are still trying to make up for the 300 hours we went over for ship from store last 4th quarter. And idk how we are going to do it without a FFTL either. They demoted ours from SrTL to TL to TM... said her position wasnt needed anymore... smh
 
tgtJose said:
I seriously hope Target has learned some lessons from last year when they go ahead with these 750 caps for regular stores. My district was part of a "peak intensity test" last year where we ramped up to 500 orders per day while other normal SFS stores were only doing 300. And this test didn't exactly go very well.

They basically just gave us a folding table to use as an extra packing station and said good luck. We didn't hire anyone who lasted, and relied on the POG TMs to boost the size of our team. It started to go downhill the day before Thanksgiving when the closing team left with all of the carts full of orders needing to be packed. It just kind of snowballed from there until we ended up a few days behind (<30% picked/packed on time).

Corporate most definitely knew we were struggling from the weekly conference calls and frequent visits. At one point we had a TM drive down from corporate (several hours away) to status with us and they just ended up helping pack all day before driving all the way back that night.

To do it right this year, they need to take a serious look at all of the stores and figure out who can handle how many orders. The stores with the best metrics and larger backrooms can handle the highest amount of orders. And stores with 500 or more at peak will need a separate TL to plan things out properly. The team will be bigger than the backroom team, so it's unfair to expect the BRTL to be able to do a great job handling both SFS and BR.
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We too received the pathetic folding table and 500 order cap. I took the initiative to assign a flat as a single holding location, no child locations. ETL Log at the time laughed at the idea saying it'd be a pain to move around. After closing a third-fourth three tier and seeing I was still on my first flat he adopted the method rather quickly. The following day he had made 6 for those who so chose to use them.
 
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So has your store's scheduling for SFS changed? We do about 150 orders a day on our busiest day (some days we have much, much less) but apparently that's going to change. Now we're having one person work 6-2:30 and one from about 11 or 12 until 4:30 or 5 most days. Busy days it'll be 6-2:30 and 8:30-5 with possibly a third person scheduled to help for a couple hours. Yesterday we had one person 6-2:30, another person helping out for a few hours who also left at 2:30 and a new trainee who left with the other two, leaving just me, myself, and I alone to pack a ton of orders and help UPS load up the truck. I was supposed to clock out at 5 and wound up being stuck an extra hour. There has to be a way to improve the process. I enjoy SFS but it's getting ridiculous. I am always the one to close up shop for the day.
 
We're at a "slow" point where saturday through maybe tuesday we're supposed to get 600 orders then the rest of the week we drop to 200-250. Our hours have been cut essentially in half from BTS with literally zero warning. I usually have to do as many regular batches as I possibly can before I take my lunch then drop a dozen pallets and pull furniture all before 2pm and have it packed before I leave.
 
we are supposed to jump to 750 a day for the 3 weeks before xmas.
 
Doglover89 said:
So has your store's scheduling for SFS changed? We do about 150 orders a day on our busiest day (some days we have much, much less) but apparently that's going to change. Now we're having one person work 6-2:30 and one from about 11 or 12 until 4:30 or 5 most days. Busy days it'll be 6-2:30 and 8:30-5 with possibly a third person scheduled to help for a couple hours. Yesterday we had one person 6-2:30, another person helping out for a few hours who also left at 2:30 and a new trainee who left with the other two, leaving just me, myself, and I alone to pack a ton of orders and help UPS load up the truck. I was supposed to clock out at 5 and wound up being stuck an extra hour. There has to be a way to improve the process. I enjoy SFS but it's getting ridiculous. I am always the one to close up shop for the day.
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There's no way to know ahead of time how many orders you will get on any given day. Some days I'll come in at 6 and find out we already hit our cap. Other days we'll have 10 orders total.

Schedule has changed a bit at my store due to TMs quitting and not having anyone readily available to replace them. So sometimes there will only be one person total to open or close both backroom and SFS.

UPS pickups are the LODs problem. I stage it at the dock before I leave at 2:30 and the LOD has to go back and let UPS in when they arrive.
 
Can anyone tell me if they changed the way before the store opens delivery of SPUs? They are usually due at 9AM. Today we had one due at 8:08AM. Took us by surprise when the Goal Time Approaching alert was sent before 8.
 
RunForACallBox said:
Can anyone tell me if they changed the way before the store opens delivery of SPUs? They are usually due at 9AM. Today we had one due at 8:08AM. Took us by surprise when the Goal Time Approaching alert was sent before 8.
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There was memo sent out a few weeks ago, I'm kinda confused as to why they changed it. But basically it's the same as before, but the goal time doesn't reflect the "goal time". So anything placed before your store opens still has that hour after opening to complete it iirc, but the goal time reflects the time it was sent in. So we can judge the late night flexers more or something
 
SnorlaxTM said:
There was memo sent out a few weeks ago, I'm kinda confused as to why they changed it. But basically it's the same as before, but the goal time doesn't reflect the "goal time". So anything placed before your store opens still has that hour after opening to complete it iirc, but the goal time reflects the time it was sent in. So we can judge the late night flexers more or something
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Out of everything they could of changed and fixed in sfs... they chose to do that smh... so stupid and confusing
 
SnorlaxTM said:
There was memo sent out a few weeks ago, I'm kinda confused as to why they changed it. But basically it's the same as before, but the goal time doesn't reflect the "goal time". So anything placed before your store opens still has that hour after opening to complete it iirc, but the goal time reflects the time it was sent in. So we can judge the late night flexers more or something
Click to expand...

I was wondering about this too. The last few times I've closed, I had orders with goal times after 11PM but not 9AM.
 
Leonhart621 said:
Fuck, I completely forgot about SPUs due before 9 now. Us BRTMs need to check up on it now since we come in at 6am while our FFTM comes in at 8am
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So in your store, FFTMs take care of SPUs? Backroom handles those in our store. FFTMs handle SFS only. We'll occasionally help out with taking care of STS if needed but that's it.
 
H2Owned said:
So did anyone figure out when the orders increase yet?
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Haven't even been able to confirm our Q4 cap yet.

RunForACallBox said:
Can anyone tell me if they changed the way before the store opens delivery of SPUs? They are usually due at 9AM. Today we had one due at 8:08AM. Took us by surprise when the Goal Time Approaching alert was sent before 8.
Click to expand...

Leonhart621 said:
Fuck, I completely forgot about SPUs due before 9 now. Us BRTMs need to check up on it now since we come in at 6am while our FFTM comes in at 8am
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There was a redwire about the displayed goal time changing. Basically it is going to always display a goal time of one hour after the order was placed, but it still doesn't need to be done until one hour after the store opens. They changed because stores that have extended hours were getting confused about the goal time (ex: store normally closes at 10pm, but is extended to 11pm during the summer. SPU drops in at 9:15pm, so the system would display a goal time of 9am, even though it actually needs to be done by 10:15pm).

So a goal time of 8:08am means you still have until 9am to complete it. It is confusing for sure but it will help make things more clear on Thanksgiving when we're open all night and in December when we open at 7am.

tgtJose said:
It's in one of the October Q4 planning guides on Workbench.
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I didn't see anything relevant the last time I checked, but I'll look again on Saturday.

Doglover89 said:
So in your store, FFTMs take care of SPUs? Backroom handles those in our store. FFTMs handle SFS only. We'll occasionally help out with taking care of STS if needed but that's it.
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Backroom is technically supposed to be doing it, but in a lot of stores it makes more sense for FF to do it.
 
Q4 planning guide left the 600+ order esfs teams out once again. I'm assuming since the 300 order stores are going to 1500 in mid nov that we're gonna get higher. At least in theory they're finally going to be replacing our 2 year old piece of shit equipment and pdas. (IF they actually follow through with that)
 
tgtJose said:
It's in one of the October Q4 planning guides on Workbench.
Click to expand...
Found it, thanks!

So it does have order caps listed, and it looks like stores who will be at 150 through October will go up to 175 for Nov. weeks 1-3, then 350 from Nov. 20-21 (just two days), then up to 750 through Dec. 3, with a gradual slowdown from there.

Check your daily order forecast under store reports on Workbench to see what it has for your store for October.

Brand new SFS stores will be at a max of 300 for the peak 2 week period.

Moosechives said:
At least in theory they're finally going to be replacing our 2 year old piece of shit equipment and pdas. (IF they actually follow through with that)
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I didn't even think about PDAs. I took it to mean they are going to replace our WAT and air pillow machines. But new PDAs would be awesome too.
 
SFSFun said:
Found it, thanks!

So it does have order caps listed, and it looks like stores who will be at 150 through October will go up to 175 for Nov. weeks 1-3, then 350 from Nov. 20-21 (just two days), then up to 750 through Dec. 3, with a gradual slowdown from there.

Check your daily order forecast under store reports on Workbench to see what it has for your store for October.

Brand new SFS stores will be at a max of 300 for the peak 2 week period.


I didn't even think about PDAs. I took it to mean they are going to replace our WAT and air pillow machines. But new PDAs would be awesome too.
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I looked at our order forcast and it still says 300 at my store all the way thru October.
 
Lucky. We've been forecasted 600 for the first 3 days then we drop to 200ish the rest of the week. We dont even get the 600 orders though. *shrugs* But still, if it does give us any more orders on our understaffed days (like it just did), we're beyond screwed.
 
Moosechives said:
Lucky. We've been forecasted 600 for the first 3 days then we drop to 200ish the rest of the week. We dont even get the 600 orders though. *shrugs* But still, if it does give us any more orders on our understaffed days (like it just did), we're beyond screwed.
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No ... im not lucky... i want more orders so i can have more hours ... I'll come help ur store
 

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