MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[hufflepuff]

and ofc one of the newbies forgot to scan half of the orders he worked on...

We keep having people packing orders without packing them out in Pack and Ship. That's a fun one to fix.

I had a TM last year who just did not understand how to read the screen when packing. When he got stuck and couldn't get his item to scan (often due to it being the wrong item), he would just hit the back button and then pack it anyway...

This is how all of our seasonals are and it's driving me insane. I can't get through all of Q4 like this. They screwed us over on our stress test pretty badly, too.

 

[DavidorJared]

Anyone else get a SFS TL out of the blue? I feel terrible for ours today, she got thrown into the fire pit yesterday and today and she looked wiped. Our ETL Log and backroom TL forgot to call UPS to schedule a big truck for pickup (11 pallets after the stress test), and today she got left with all the seasonals, the only "vet" rarely does ship during the year so she was having issues too.

I closed backroom today but as soon as i got in she was hollering every 20 mins, ended up in ship half the day and rushing to close. Luckily my STL let me slide a little and stage pallets on the floor as long as it was after 10 pm, backroom is a mess...everything is a mess...

 

[SurefireWolf]

Anyone else get a SFS TL out of the blue? I feel terrible for ours today, she got thrown into the fire pit yesterday and today and she looked wiped. Our ETL Log and backroom TL forgot to call UPS to schedule a big truck for pickup (11 pallets after the stress test), and today she got left with all the seasonals, the only "vet" rarely does ship during the year so she was having issues too.

I closed backroom today but as soon as i got in she was hollering every 20 mins, ended up in ship half the day and rushing to close. Luckily my STL let me slide a little and stage pallets on the floor as long as it was after 10 pm, backroom is a mess...everything is a mess...

My store made the Plano TL the SFS TL. Besides possibly writing the schedules, so far he has done nothing for SFS. I am still the one to fill out the supply audit forms, restock and organize the area, train new TMs, deal with any problems... basically be the Team Lead. But no, the position shouldn't go to me because I can't break my ETL's 99% fulfillment goal.

Granted, the Plano TL is a good person, but I have no clue why they'd officially put him in charge of something where he's not going to work, or really be a part of.

 

[SrTLall]

We keep having people packing orders without packing them out in Pack and Ship. That's a fun one to fix.

But no, the position shouldn't go to me because I can't break my ETL's 99% fulfillment goal.

LOL, I can check when I go in, but I'm pretty sure no store in the company is anywhere near 99%. We are just above 95% and I know there are stores higher than that, but not by much. Sort of an unreal expectation right there.

Although, you could just start fulfilling orders and send empty boxes, as long as fullfillment % is over 99 nothing else matters, right?

 

[spotlife]

My store made the Plano TL the SFS TL. Besides possibly writing the schedules, so far he has done nothing for SFS. I am still the one to fill out the supply audit forms, restock and organize the area, train new TMs, deal with any problems... basically be the Team Lead. But no, the position shouldn't go to me because I can't break my ETL's 99% fulfillment goal.

Granted, the Plano TL is a good person, but I have no clue why they'd officially put him in charge of something where he's not going to work, or really be a part of.

The 4th quarter guide on workbench highly suggests stores use Plano TL as their workload decreases during the holidays. I was also thrown into SFS from a different department but I'd like to think I quickly learned the process, tips, and tricks that make me a very valuable asset on the flex team. I'm teaching the new guys how to use RFID because softlines is horrible however we can't get INFs!

 

[SurefireWolf]

LOL, I can check when I go in, but I'm pretty sure no store in the company is anywhere near 99%. We are just above 95% and I know there are stores higher than that, but not by much. Sort of an unreal expectation right there.

Although, you could just start fulfilling orders and send empty boxes, as long as fullfillment % is over 99 nothing else matters, right?

The store with the highest % in the company is clearly cheating. I decided to check one day after my shift so I pulled up the group/market report and looked for the highest one, some ridiculously high number like 98 point something percent. I opened their store on the weekly report page and they had 100% fulfillment for the week and about 90 orders cancelled due to "No Inventory," so at least I know how they're cheating.
But that idiotic 99% goal is the reason our entire flex team is the most stressed out in the store, and also why nobody wants my position that I've requested to be open for months.

 

[SFSFun]

I opened their store on the weekly report page and they had 100% fulfillment for the week and about 90 orders cancelled due to "No Inventory," so at least I know how they're cheating.

Cancelling orders that way should still affect the fulfillment score. Or at least it did a few months ago.

 

[PackAndCry]

Does anyone else just love all the new advertising for order pickup? We even have "thanks for letting us do your shopping for you" flyers to stuff in SPU bags.

 

[DavidorJared]

I don't mind, we've been slow at phasing out backroom so if it wasn't for ship i'd basically have no hours. And i've talked to everyone in the store i've trained for ship and general consensus is that ship is probably one of the best TM positions because 1/3 of the day is spent packing and jamming out to music. I think the one thing that does grind my gears is the unrealistic goal times, its like corporate doesn't account for the fact that there are guests on the floor.

 

[PackAndCry]

I feel like my store is the only one that doesn't have to rush to get things done, our SFS team usually helps out with push/backstock when we're done with our workload, at this time of year, anyway. Of course, our INFs are shit, but other than that we pretty much always come clean.

 

[JohnSith373]

I feel like my store is the only one that doesn't have to rush to get things done, our SFS team usually helps out with push/backstock when we're done with our workload, at this time of year, anyway. Of course, our INFs are shit, but other than that we pretty much always come clean.

Do you guys not work on tomorrow’s workload after packing and if there’s anything to receive? It helps out with INF’s for my store. Allows for us more time to search the back for any baffles.

 

[H2Owned]

So my STL came to me yesterday and told me we are suppose to be doing 8,000 plus orders everyday during the first week of December..... I really can't see that happening lol.... maybe 5,000

 

[Lgsfs]

So my STL came to me yesterday and told me we are suppose to be doing 8,000 plus orders everyday during the first week of December..... I really can't see that happening lol.... maybe 5,000

We do maybe 300/day currently and our stress test was close to 600 and they barely got it done.

 

[Moosechives]

So my STL came to me yesterday and told me we are suppose to be doing 8,000 plus orders everyday during the first week of December..... I really can't see that happening lol.... maybe 5,000

Make sure he's not mixing up units and orders lol...We're also doing 8000+ units Dec wk 1. First glance it was 8000 from Cyber Monday to Thursday of that week. They changed it today to CM + Tuesday at 8000, Wed 7000 and the rest of the week half that. We're supposed to schedule 600 hours per day for most of the week.

 

[BackroomBear]

We're supposed to schedule 600 hours per day for most of the week.

This is....insane. 75 people (@ 8hr shifts)???? How??? Is that number right?

 

[H2Owned]

This is....insane. 75 people (@ 8hr shifts)???? How??? Is that number right?

Yeah I believe that is right... my ETL Hr said we are going 24 hours the 1st week of December and we are doing 8 hour shifts lol hopefully we have enough equipment

 

[Flow Warrior]

I don't mind, we've been slow at phasing out backroom so if it wasn't for ship i'd basically have no hours. And i've talked to everyone in the store i've trained for ship and general consensus is that ship is probably one of the best TM positions because 1/3 of the day is spent packing and jamming out to music. I think the one thing that does grind my gears is the unrealistic goal times, its like corporate doesn't account for the fact that there are guests on the floor.

Well the unrealistic goal times had to go somewhere. . But yes they enjoy do it. The rest um not so much.

 

[Flow Warrior]

Yeah I believe that is right... my ETL Hr said we are going 24 hours the 1st week of December and we are doing 8 hour shifts lol hopefully we have enough equipment

No you don't. I dont have to give you a funny meme. You dont

 

[SFSFun]

So my STL came to me yesterday and told me we are suppose to be doing 8,000 plus orders everyday during the first week of December..... I really can't see that happening lol.... maybe 5,000

Surely that's units, not orders. It would be like at least 4 full outgoing trailers per day if it's orders...

 

[RightArm]

Surely that's units, not orders. It would be like at least 4 full outgoing trailers per day if it's orders...

For those of us not in SFS... what's the difference between a unit and an order?

 

[RainDog]

For those of us not in SFS... what's the difference between a unit and an order?

Basically it’s the same difference between a unit (a single unit of a single DPCI) of merchandise sold and a transaction.
We talk about units in SFS because they give a more accurate picture of the workload than orders, because an order can contain any number of items. (On average it works out to around two units per order.)

 

[RightArm]

Basically it’s the same difference between a unit (a single unit of a single DPCI) of merchandise sold and a transaction.
We talk about units in SFS because they give a more accurate picture of the workload than orders, because an order can contain any number of items. (On average it works out to around two units per order.)

So if every shopper ordered 10 items each, then 8000 units would be roughly 800 orders?

 

[SFSFun]

For those of us not in SFS... what's the difference between a unit and an order?

SFS workload is helpfully measured in different ways, depending what system you're looking at. It can be orders (one persons entire order), DPCIs (actual number of different DPCIs), units (number of individual items, including multiples of the same DPCI), or eaches (same thing as units).

So if every shopper ordered 10 items each, then 8000 units would be roughly 800 orders?

Yes

 

[H2Owned]

Well tomorrow's orders and Sunday orders are going to be mostly if not all toys x_x..... with that 25% of toys deal tomorrow.... going to be fun with all the black Friday shippers =)

 

[SFSFun]

I'm more worried about untouched toys backstock that we could have to dig through. We've taken 4 doubles this week, and the 1-2 TMs in backroom each day are falling behind.