Archived The Big & Dandy Backroom thread!

[callmetaylor]

We did a test and we set aside a box of macoroni from the 1s. We backstocked before price change dropped and it showed up in the system.

That's plenty of time for the item to be normaly pushed wrong and brought back for backstock.


We're also don't a test now to see if one pulls send item, and someone else backstocks soon, if it'll show up

In that case there must be a way for stores/districts to customize the time span they want to track, because it sounds as though you and I had very different results basically doing the exact same thing. Definitely not accusing you of lying, but I also know that I didn't have a single item flag for me last week despite having a handful of items that easily fall under the circumstances you described that flagged for you.

Bad stores try to find ways to manipulate the system, good stores dgaf!

I completely agree with this. I was freaked out when I first read about the new report, and then I realized I would happily/easily defend 85% of the stuff that might pop up on the report, so the only reason to be worried is if you're lazy and just bsing your way through your job, or you have horrible leadership.

Maybe I've been exceptionally lucky, but the entire time I've been at Target I've felt very comfortable "breaking" the rules in the name of efficiency/common sense/etc. There are a number of ways I circumvent 'best practices' or the rules, and my leaders are aware of most of them and are totally ok with it, because it makes sense for me/my team/my store. I feel like Target provides guidelines, but we've all gotta figure out what works best for us/our team/our store/our clientele. Sometimes that means "breaking" the rules, but it's always done for the right reasons.

 

[Castagnier]

So how have your backroom teams been with E2E going on? Have TMs been shuffled around, cut out, or just plain given reduced hours so they'll eventually quit?

My team has actually been growing and getting more hours (we're all at or near 40). No word at all on us being downsized.

 

[Noiinteam]

At my store, backroom hrs are being cut. One of my buddies always had 40 hrs. Needs benefits. Now down to 28 hrs as of this week. He is looking to work market in the afternoon.

 

[Castagnier]

Should be easy to transfer to market team since it's nothing backroom hasn't done before from what I've seen. The only real difference is that they can also use U-boats.

 

[WestLoggy]

Back to the display items and cafs: our TVs are set to 0 and will pull if sold.

Burning pulls: do it every night with certain assortments etc. Our LogETL is familiar with it and 100% okay as long as we justify the reason. I was told once the timer for suspect items was set at 5 minutes. Dunno - could be set diff at each store?

E2E: only Market so far at my store although softlines and cosm is preparing to take over. You can definitely tell they've been messing around in the backroom as Waco counts are now completely inaccurate within those sections. One week after Market E2E we went immediately into Red after being Green forever. Of course, the Market team decided to reorganize the backroom fill groups: instead of by fill group they went by isle .... seriously. That lasted one month: the fill groups have returned lol

Backroom hours have been cut here too. A couple have now gone below what is needed for bennies and as their take home has reduced by 50% are potentially eligible for partial unemployment. I would suspect Target will offer them hours in another Dept before allowing that to happen, though.

 

[SFSFun]

So how have your backroom teams been with E2E going on? Have TMs been shuffled around, cut out, or just plain given reduced hours so they'll eventually quit?

My team has actually been growing and getting more hours (we're all at or near 40). No word at all on us being downsized.

We had a TM quit (found a job in his field of study), 2 TMs moved to the grocery team, and the other two TMs work random grocery/hardlines/backroom/SFS shifts. The TL still does just backroom, except for the 1-2 days a week he runs the truck.

 

[SrTLall]

After checking the pull types report, I saw some interesting things.

1 - there is another store similar to mine that sends triple the eaches out of the backroom each week, I don't even know how that's possible. I brainstormed a way to fudge the system to make it look like a lot is coming out of the back - drop manuals for BUCK and pull a ridiculously high number. Haven't tried it yet, wonder if it works.
2 - it doesn't look like a majority of stores in my group are doing any manuals. If you're reading this and haven't traded in your autos for manuals yet, it's amazing and creates tons of space in the back.

 

[Lazy]

After checking the pull types report, I saw some interesting things.

1 - there is another store similar to mine that sends triple the eaches out of the backroom each week, I don't even know how that's possible. I brainstormed a way to fudge the system to make it look like a lot is coming out of the back - drop manuals for BUCK and pull a ridiculously high number. Haven't tried it yet, wonder if it works.
2 - it doesn't look like a majority of stores in my group are doing any manuals. If you're reading this and haven't traded in your autos for manuals yet, it's amazing and creates tons of space in the back.

We do manuels for hba 1+2 Chen and pharm like 3-4 times a week.

 

[WestLoggy]

We create manuals for all fill-groups daily immediately after acknowledging the GM truck. When we first started the work load was crazy but after about a week or so they became quite manageable and you can now see the difference in the amount of stock in the backroom: it is substantially lower. Manuals combined with routine sweeps has really cleaned up our backroom. Unfortunately, the E2Emarket team still has their area completely wonked out and with softlines and COSM ("Beauty") I suspect those to quickly go to h*ll in a handbasket, too.

 

[EverythingJoe]

I am HATING this new manual CAF system in the backroom for several reasons. At my store, they only have two people assigned per day to the backroom, one from 6:30 AM-2 PM, and the other from 2-9 PM. You really need two people for 3 PM CAFs. And then to top it off, they don't want you pulling the CAFs the way you always have. You have to first print up the list, and then you have to make manual CAFs for all the ones over 5 minutes. At 3 PM, that takes 10 minutes just by itself. And then they want you to make either 50% or full fills for those areas. And then they want the backroom person to push those. That's too much work! Luckily, my Hardlines ETL will get team members to help me push. But still, they want to make everything complicated, and expect us to get the backroom clean. One person in the backroom after 2 PM can't do all of that!

 

[mammoth]

So what's everyone's backroom schedule looking like nowadays? I'm the TL , and on a truck day, it's me 6-230 and a TM 12-4. That means I'm responsible to pull all autofills, pull all research batches, do flexible fufillments, backstock all backline, and stay on top of truck backstock all by myself. I also only have direct communication with my TMs for about 2 hours. I'm working with 85 hours for a 4 truck week. You take my 40 out, and the closing shifts out (7 days, 4 hours per day) that leaves me with about 17 hours to spread around. And our HR had the balls to ask why the BR had gaps in coverage.

 

[SrTLall]

My store hasn't really changed a thing. Maybe we are waiting until the whole E2E thing is scraped or we are screwing ourself if it ever fully rolls out. We have just changed a couple flow TMs to shifts later in the day for both Consumables and SL.

 

[SFSFun]

So what's everyone's backroom schedule looking like nowadays? I'm the TL , and on a truck day, it's me 6-230 and a TM 12-4. That means I'm responsible to pull all autofills, pull all research batches, do flexible fufillments, backstock all backline, and stay on top of truck backstock all by myself. I also only have direct communication with my TMs for about 2 hours. I'm working with 85 hours for a 4 truck week. You take my 40 out, and the closing shifts out (7 days, 4 hours per day) that leaves me with about 17 hours to spread around. And our HR had the balls to ask why the BR had gaps in coverage.

Ours is similar. We have one TM (usually the TL) from 4-12:30, and another TM for a 4 hour shift, ending no later than noon. On non-truck days there is a TM from 4-6 to pull the autofills and do the audit, then they switch to salesfloor or SFS. There is no mid or closer.

What's supposed to occur instead of having a backroom team is this:
- The E2E teams in market, electronics, softlines, and HBA all come in each day and deal with their own pulls and backstock.
- Instocks and pricing should pull their own batches.
- We have a TLOD work a closing shift each day using salesfloor hours, and they should be pulling the CAFs (excluding E2E areas) and monitoring FFs.
- All salesfloor TMs are to take care of their own backstock.

The problem is that all of the above relies on the entire store to do everything every time, and it just doesn't happen. And the backroom TL still gets bitched at for having leftover backstock that who the hell knows left there, red BRLA, obvious steritech violations, and oh don't forget to pull that 8 hour price change batch that pricing can't get to and will still sit in the backroom until it goes salvage.

And don't even get me started on the clusterfuck that is finding time to sort BTS transition. As of Friday we had 20 pallets, and maybe two thirds of that was sorted.

 

[FailFaux]

My store hasn't really changed a thing. Maybe we are waiting until the whole E2E thing is scraped or we are screwing ourself if it ever fully rolls out. We have just changed a couple flow TMs to shifts later in the day for both Consumables and SL.

This sounds a lot like my store.

 

[anathema]

Only thing I don't get about manual CAFs is that they're not falling into autos/CAFs? I thought we were supposed to acknowledge truck, drop manuals, drop autos. Do we just drop manuals after autos then?

 

[mammoth]

Only thing I don't get about manual CAFs is that they're not falling into autos/CAFs? I thought we were supposed to acknowledge truck, drop manuals, drop autos. Do we just drop manuals after autos then?

yes, you drop manuals after autos and the autos get absorbed by the manuals. they will drop out of the pda

 

[Lazy]

Only thing I don't get about manual CAFs is that they're not falling into autos/CAFs? I thought we were supposed to acknowledge truck, drop manuals, drop autos. Do we just drop manuals after autos then?

We drop the Manuals after autos. The manuals wouldn't fall into autos cause autos only replenish If it meets the threshold sold vs manuals that will fill everything even If only one more is needed.

 

[Mysterious]

I'm not sure if ASANTS. (Going into more detail).

My team fills the essentials (food, paper, chem, and baby). If we drop a Grocery manual and do not get it pulled before the first Scheduled CAF at 1pm, it will auto-merge into them. It does not always reflect as part of the scheduled CAFs. All that will happen is the areas that you may have tried to get filled will remain low or empty. We also have grocery for the scheduled 5pm CAFs on Saturaday and Sunday. This also applies to Hardlines during the scheduled CAFs at 3pm. You have until that timeframe to clear it out. My team are not responsible for the Softlines department. My store's autofills are scheduled to drop at 4am alongside the varying truck unloads. However, if a softlines manual is not pulled properly, it will drop and merge into the next autofill.

As others have mentioned, by efficiently owning the instocks and manual process, you will be able to decrease the overall time for the following autofills and scheduled CAFs. Of course, they are also impacted by how well the truck unload process goes. My store has seen autos at their peak of 14 hours, which we have decreased to 8.5 at the most.

Use the manuals process to also monitor your backroom accuracy, ghosts and baffles. You can make sure that the products are replenishing the floor properly.

In closing, the POG team needs to also stay on top on their process because if they do not tie, set or submit a batch properly, that can increase the size of your normal batches.

 

[TTGOz]

I'm slightly interested in doing backroom when I might be able to get the chance. It seems like a lot of work but at the same time it doesn't, so not sure. Could anyone give me a rough laydown on what happens in a typical BR shift? I know you do a lot of pulling and back stocking, I think.

 

[SweatyShirts]

I'm slightly interested in doing backroom when I might be able to get the chance. It seems like a lot of work but at the same time it doesn't, so not sure. Could anyone give me a rough laydown on what happens in a typical BR shift? I know you do a lot of pulling and back stocking, I think.

I'm backroom dayside and there are 2 types of shift for that.

Mid shift (12-4):
12 to 1pm is auditing, responding to get for guests and item lookups. Sometimes I have to fix the line if it's cluttered and just a mess. Unload baler if it's full

1pm to 3 is pulling the 1pm CAFs, pushing them, backstocking the remnants. More auditing if needed, continue cleaning the line if needed, not unheard of that Market needs some support. Still respond to Front End and Salesfloor calls.

3pm to 4 is pulling the 3pm CAFs and clocking out.

Next shift is the closing shift (1:30 or 2 through 10, or 3-11 on weekends)

1:30 to 3 is same as mid shift.

3 to 8:30 (or 9:30 if weekend) is pulling, pushing and backstocking the 3pm CAFs and whatever other situational work we have.

8:30 (or 9:30) to close is setting the line, sweeping 1st floor of backroom, staging everything for flow team and then doing count of leftover backstock and push in all of backroom so TLs can easily delegate work in the morning.

 

[SFSFun]

I'm slightly interested in doing backroom when I might be able to get the chance. It seems like a lot of work but at the same time it doesn't, so not sure. Could anyone give me a rough laydown on what happens in a typical BR shift? I know you do a lot of pulling and back stocking, I think.

Because every store is implementing his end to end stuff differently, it's hard to say exactly what you would be doing as backroom in your store. Everything @SweatyShirts described is not done by backroom at my store.

But in general, yes you will be doing lots of pulling and backstocking.

 

[SrTLall]

We drop the Manuals after autos. The manuals wouldn't fall into autos cause autos only replenish If it meets the threshold sold vs manuals that will fill everything even If only one more is needed.

Are you doing work 50% ahead? We are doing fill for depth, and it won't replenish until 3 eaches will fit. IMO, there is no point to do 50% ahead because you're pulling the same DPCI too frequently, negatively impacting productivity.

 

[missionimpossible]

i like depth to fill except for h&b, it pulls way to much for the travel aisle.

 

[SrTLall]

i like depth to fill except for h&b, it pulls way to much for the travel aisle.

Travel aisle is a pain until the capacities are corrected.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I'm slightly interested in doing backroom when I might be able to get the chance. It seems like a lot of work but at the same time it doesn't, so not sure. Could anyone give me a rough laydown on what happens in a typical BR shift? I know you do a lot of pulling and back stocking, I think.

As others have said, every store is different. Mainly you'll be pulling autofill, backstocking, and pulling cafs/batches

Some stores have Backroom do various other tasks. My Backroom we don't set the line for flow team, we don't answer calls or go up for fast service, we pull flexible fulfillments if a ship to store person isn't in, lately now they've been wanting us to push the cafs instead of leaving them for flow the next day.

Backroom is the best job in the store