So I’ve recently transitioned into market as the TL from Hardlines & Electronics and it’s been.......rough..
I’m curious how other market teams are getting through their dry push while also keeping produce orders consistent enough to keep fdc trucks manegable. We’re constantly rolling 5+ u boats of dry a day. what are some tips to coming clean or getting audits and purging in? Being new to market, I know it’s going to take time to correct the process but I’d like to know that this process can truly be fixed!
I promise this process can be fixed, same exact thing happened to me when I was moved to market. 7ish months in and we're running smoothly.
Keeping your order consistent is easy if only you do the order, I do the order everyday around 3pm 5days a week. When I'm not there I pre-write it and have the opener scan it in (staple it to their worksheet). If you don't already do the order it might take some time to get it down. I only have issues doing it three days out when I have two days off but my team knows to add to it if we have three or less of something. For "weekly freshness" I swap out all low selling items (apples ea., oranges, grapefruits for us) on my opening days which are non RDC days.
For RDC days I have an opener (6am) who does light cleaning, the cull, pushes produce/ meat/ banana racks, cold autofill, then helps with Uboats until the FDC gets there. My second TM (8am) starts with pulling all autos but only pushes dry, then moves to Uboats for the rest of the shift. I come in for a mid shift and help with Uboats if needed, I tend to push 2-5 depending on the truck size and who my 8am TM is. Sometimes I'll help the opener finish FDC first and move them to Uboats so we can have three people working on them. With my slower TMs I like to push the same Uboat with them to get them to pick up the pace. If its a large FDC and RDC day I've had the closer push the rest of the Uboats instead of doing pog fills and manuals but normally its only 1 or 2 when that happens. So they're still able to closing routines.
Schedule breakdown RDC days;
Opener (pfresh) 6am - 2:30
Opener (dry) 8am - 3:30 or 4:30 (depending on hours)
Mid (TL) 10am - 6
Closer 3:30 - 10:30
Non RDC day;
Opener (TL/ pfresh) 7am - 3:30
Opener (dry) 7am - 2:30 or 3:30
Mid (frozen or dry) 11am - 7
Closer 3:30 - 10:30
Audits are tricky but if you get everyone doing them you'll be in good shape. I have my openers scanning everyday, including myself, in pfresh. That includes any cold products that aren't frozen. I have a dedicated freezer TM scanning 5 days a week, mid shift on non RDC days do all dry, closers do all of market when its been a rough day and no one has had the time. My ETL and I also scan any holes we see, probably not as often as we should but if we walk by it we'll scan it.
Purging, pog fills, and manuals;
I have a dedicated TM for every fill group, I let them pick their own so mine breakdowns like this: Dairy/ PRO1/ GR1, Meat/ GR3, GR2, SNCK/ Candy, BEV1/ BEV2/ LIQR, and Freezer. This way everyone has an area to focus on and they're never coming to me asking what that should be doing in their "free time". Its also great because you know who's doing what and who's not doing much. When I first came to market we started with just manuals, moved to pog fills, then purging. Make sure they're checking ALL dates, capacities, and counts. We found SOO much out of date product in my BR its not even funny, just found four boxes of olive oil from may 2018. A lot of our freezer counts were off too, which would explain the crazy amount of BS. To get all this done I have them doing this any chance we get, non RDC days are the best. Everyone hits their area at least twice a week and closers do it daily, so I try to rotate who closes and mid shifts on non RDC days to accomplish this.
Being a consumables TL is tough but fun, you need to be hands on and really help out your team. Hoped this helped.
