Archived Flexible Fullfillment Process

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konk said:
What do you login as? Or are you talking about current apps?
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I log in as BRTL and FFTM. And not current cause when it's on current and I hit it, it refreshes.
 
Looking at the website, there is way too much in the way of school supplies that are eligible for in-store pickup. I have the feeling that this year, BTS is going to more chaotic than ever.
 
At our store, all ETLs, TLs, and GSAs are required to log on as a Fulfillment TM. The closer we are to TSC, the more likely it is we'll actually get the alert, so as a GSA I'm normally always calling them out to the Backroom as soon as they drop.


If you guys think FF is bad, check out the Pilot materials for "Ship from Store" under Workbench. Anyone in a store that's testing this yet? (I think there are only a dozen stores company wide right now...) It sounds basically the same as FF, except the FFTM packs the items in a box and prints a shipping label rather than taking the items to GS. The premise is that if a guest within a certain radius of your store orders something from Target.com that they want shipped, and your store has that item in stock, it's cheaper and quicker to ship the item directly from your store, as opposed to shipping from the DC. Plus, your store gets credit for the sale.

Sounds like a PITA if you ask me.
 
I usually just lurk but I had to say something about the Ship From Store pilot. My store is one of the ones testing it. So far it's beyond a PITA. Basically it is the same as FF but we end up packing and shipping it out of our store. We have packing stations with a variety of box sizes, and bags with hold locations nearby the stations. When it first started, we had a limit of about 50 orders. After a few weeks they bumped it up to 200 orders. It gets overwhelming some days because of many issues like PDA lag, MyFF app errors, guest interruptions (since we have to go out on the floor to look for this crap), poor zoning especially in softlines (bathing suits = nightmare), shipping labels not printing, missing orders, etc. Also it STILL allows people to order items with ZERO or NEGATIVE counts which forces us to hit Item Not Found, lowering our fulfillment %. The orders that drop are also very inconsistent... For example, one hour there could be no orders, then the next 60 would drop and you'd be stuck playing catch up for the rest of the day. Right now we're limited to THREE FFTMs per day, open (pick shift), mid (pack shift), close(clean up/pick shift). The opener comes in and starts picking and putting into hold. The packer eventually comes in to shipping labels which automatically start printing at 10am and continue every hour so long as orders have been picked and put into hold. Today alone we had 175 orders...had ETLs and other TMs trying to get this beast under control...The general idea is that everything that drops before 3PM HAS to be picked and packed to be put on the UPS truck which 6-6:30pm seems to be the set time. Right now we've had about 3-4 pallets of boxes per weekday and I had 8 pallets on monday. (No UPS on weekends). I would assume it would get a little easier if/when this program actually drops for the rest of you guys...considering we're getting orders from freakin Cali which kinda defeats the purpose of this pilot. *goes back into hiding*
 
Moosechives said:
I usually just lurk but I had to say something about the Ship From Store pilot. My store is one of the ones testing it. So far it's beyond a PITA. Basically it is the same as FF but we end up packing and shipping it out of our store. We have packing stations with a variety of box sizes, and bags with hold locations nearby the stations. When it first started, we had a limit of about 50 orders. After a few weeks they bumped it up to 200 orders. It gets overwhelming some days because of many issues like PDA lag, MyFF app errors, guest interruptions (since we have to go out on the floor to look for this crap), poor zoning especially in softlines (bathing suits = nightmare), shipping labels not printing, missing orders, etc. Also it STILL allows people to order items with ZERO or NEGATIVE counts which forces us to hit Item Not Found, lowering our fulfillment %. The orders that drop are also very inconsistent... For example, one hour there could be no orders, then the next 60 would drop and you'd be stuck playing catch up for the rest of the day. Right now we're limited to THREE FFTMs per day, open (pick shift), mid (pack shift), close(clean up/pick shift). The opener comes in and starts picking and putting into hold. The packer eventually comes in to shipping labels which automatically start printing at 10am and continue every hour so long as orders have been picked and put into hold. Today alone we had 175 orders...had ETLs and other TMs trying to get this beast under control...The general idea is that everything that drops before 3PM HAS to be picked and packed to be put on the UPS truck which 6-6:30pm seems to be the set time. Right now we've had about 3-4 pallets of boxes per weekday and I had 8 pallets on monday. (No UPS on weekends). I would assume it would get a little easier if/when this program actually drops for the rest of you guys...considering we're getting orders from freakin Cali which kinda defeats the purpose of this pilot. *goes back into hiding*
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I hate this idea. Target would be better of fixing whatever problems exist in their online ordering process but instead they are going to waste hundreds of thousands of payroll hours by building, implementing, and maintaining a shipping process at every store.

.com warehouses are specifically setup to pick and ship orders in bulk, stores are not.
 
I facepalm so hard whenever I go to pack something and it ends up being like a $1.50 lingerie bag or something and the person that ordered it lives literally a mile away from the store.
 
Apparently we are going to start doing FF for dry grocery items...I couldn't believe it
 
Moosechives said:
I facepalm so hard whenever I go to pack something and it ends up being like a $1.50 lingerie bag or something and the person that ordered it lives literally a mile away from the store.
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Ugh.

What happens if Target gets rid of the BR team? Viper, right? I don't think I would want to be in toys during the holidays. No way you could do all the pulls/Flexible Fulfillment orders/zoning/helping guest/etc. during 4th quarter.

I guess I should ask who *picks* the ship from store items? Which team is responsible?
 
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jenna said:
Moosechives said:
I facepalm so hard whenever I go to pack something and it ends up being like a $1.50 lingerie bag or something and the person that ordered it lives literally a mile away from the store.
Click to expand...
Ugh.

What happens if Target gets rid of the BR team? Viper, right? I don't think I would want to be in toys during the holidays. No way you could do all the pulls/Flexible Fulfillment orders/zoning/helping guest/etc. during 4th quarter.

I guess I should ask who *picks* this ship from store items? Which team is responsible?
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Right now we're a team made up of a couple backroom/br day guys, a flow tm, and one hardlines. We basically alternate between ship from store and our other workcenters. Doesn't really help when our BR day is severely understaffed as it is already lol...This pilot makes me MISS doing regular pick up in store FF with its 18 DPCI grocery list orders. At least we had a chance at being green for that.
 
Does anyone remember what kind of online specials target.com does through the holidays? I would think that could overwhelm Ship to Store.

Are their limitations for orders where the shipping costs are greater than the cost of the items being shipped?
 
Want to know the cure? We're number 1 in our district in all FFA metrics.

The fitting room team member needs to call out HOURLY "Backroom, this is your FFA reminder" we have not missed a picked since this rolled out.

This will cure all problems, I promise.
 
The operators at my store suck. I have to baby them and say "operator, do you have a working PDA" and "can we get ff alerts every thirty minutes on the walkie talkie?". If you are the operator, please have a working PDA at your side. If you dont have one, do whatever it takes to get one.
 
Just fare warning for all of the stores that are beginning SFS soon. If you log in as FF Team Member you will get not only the alerts for Guest Pickups but the ones for Next Day Delivery. It will alert you for every order, basically paralyzing your PDA for as long as it takes for the alerts to finish. They keep saying they will be fixing it with an update but I never see it. It got so bad that when the Corporate FF team visited our store (we were a pilot store for the process so they visited us and spent the day with us to see our process) they, themselves told us NOT to log in as FFTM so we wouldn't get the constant alerts.

Best guess is to keep checking every 30 minutes and have a designated TM to do it. That's how they wanted us to do it when the program originally rolled out last year. I admit it gets difficult when it is crazy busy but having a designated TM to check regularly might help.
 
ElectronicsAndSuch said:
Want to know the cure? We're number 1 in our district in all FFA metrics.

The fitting room team member needs to call out HOURLY "Backroom, this is your FFA reminder" we have not missed a picked since this rolled out.

This will cure all problems, I promise.
Click to expand...

we have a timer sitting at the service desk, every half hour we check myFA, and message the backroom if there's anything that needs doing. Works when specific people are at the service desk, others don't know about it or don't remember.
 
Jackswastedlife99 said:
The operators at my store suck. I have to baby them and say "operator, do you have a working PDA" and "can we get ff alerts every thirty minutes on the walkie talkie?". If you are the operator, please have a working PDA at your side. If you dont have one, do whatever it takes to get one.
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Even if it means killing someone in Price Change? No thanks. As someone who gets operator shifts, I'll warn the backroom once if I don't have a PDA and then they're on their own until I get one. Of course, we also have a note for all the operators outlining that they are supposed to be checking for fulfillment orders every 30 mins. So I'll bet we make for a better experience for backroom than your operators...
 
Nauzhror said:
we have a timer sitting at the service desk, every half hour we check myFA, and message the backroom if there's anything that needs doing. Works when specific people are at the service desk, others don't know about it or don't remember.
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This is the best solution, I think, because it doesn't require an extra PDA.
 
Work a backroom shift on a Sunday during the NFL season while pulling CAF pulls and then you can see if you have any time to check flexible fulfillment.

It's not going to get the operator to pick up a PDA and use their fingers to press the screen and get into FF and see if there is an order in there. Every 30 minutes please.

And if the operator does not have a PDA(there really isn't an excuse not to have), someone get that operator a working PDA. Honestly, the operator should be stock piled with a walkie talkie and a PDA and lots and lots of charged batteries at the fitting room. That's how I would do it. Then again, I use logic and common sense. That's something that the upper management of Target does not have.
 
When we are short on equipment the operator gets the shaft. But that means she will call out "check flexible" until she gets one.
 
BRTJ said:
Apparently we are going to start doing FF for dry grocery items...I couldn't believe it
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Anyone actually getting these orders? I just saw this on redwire last night! My etl-ge didn't know. My etl-log didn't know. The one gsa I asked didn't even know what redwire is....
 
Jackswastedlife99 said:
And if the operator does not have a PDA(there really isn't an excuse not to have), someone get that operator a working PDA. Honestly, the operator should be stock piled with a walkie talkie and a PDA and lots and lots of charged batteries at the fitting room. That's how I would do it. Then again, I use logic and common sense. That's something that the upper management of Target does not have.
Click to expand...
Can you be in charge of equipment in my store? Please? I agree 100%.
 
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