Logistics The Flow/Inbound thread: Until We Yeet Again edition 🤙

fun at target said:
I really hope we get those extra boats before the holiday doubles start or this 4th Q well be a blood bath at my store.
We ran out of all u-boats,flats,tubs and smart carts today during a average truck
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We've ran out of vehicles too especially when the team pushing priority 2 vehicles are pulled off of pushing truck to zone. Agree with you that it's going to be hell come 4th quarter.

Are you using metro racks for the Softlines unload? Pilot store and the ETL's decided to "borrow" the metro racks (green racks on wheels) from Starbucks/Market. I had to laugh because the Market TL was not included on the decision making. Tempers flared so bad that we ordered more metro racks to diffuse the tension between the parties involved. I understand the idea and method to the new unload process but you can't just take a workcenters' supplies especially if they use them everyday to do their job...
 
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This year will be our new STL's first Q4 at this store, and he strikes me as a very pragmatic dude so I'm holding on to some small hope that he'll tell the ETL-LOG to start doing it his own way (i.e. classic mode) if it gets to be too much of a hassle. Maybe that's too optimistic on my part but you never know
 
We got our Uboats earlier this week. Only like 30 of them. Its nearly impossible for anyone to walk around the line when we're unloading, we pretty much have to completely stop and move every vehicle on the line right up against the line the let someone get through and then push them back. We're still having a huge problem running out of vehicles because our TL makes us replace the whole vehicle if one shelf fills up even if the other two are completely empty which is dumb but w/e, so we're still having to use tubs and pallets half of the time.
 
SNS12345 said:
We got our Uboats earlier this week. Only like 30 of them. Its nearly impossible for anyone to walk around the line when we're unloading, we pretty much have to completely stop and move every vehicle on the line right up against the line the let someone get through and then push them back. We're still having a huge problem running out of vehicles because our TL makes us replace the whole vehicle if one shelf fills up even if the other two are completely empty which is dumb but w/e, so we're still having to use tubs and pallets half of the time.
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We are still in the first weeks of the new roll out so we have ETLs there every morning making adjustments so there no way to stray away from the new processes even if we wanted to. So right now when we start running out of vehicles. They make the unload crew try to speed push for a few hours to make room on the vehicles so they can finish the truck. Our TL and receiver have been bugging the store to let us unload earlier in the morning on big trucks because if the unload take past 8:30am then the vendors wont be able to work because how are receiving is set up its almost impossible to use the vendor door or dock when were unloading
 
Just want to see what the thrower during unload is responsible for now because according to are store manager the thrower now has to throw the whole truck ,push the line,work the line if it gets back up and has to pull pallets out of the truck all on there own .
It seems kinda unfair making the guy already doing the most physical part of the unload do all that without help Because honestly only like 2 guys on flow are even capable of doing all that on there own
 
fun at target said:
Just want to see what the thrower during unload is responsible for now because according to are store manager the thrower now has to throw the whole truck ,push the line,work the line if it gets back up and has to pull pallets out of the truck all on there own .
It seems kinda unfair making the guy already doing the most physical part of the unload do all that without help Because honestly only like 2 guys on flow are even capable of doing all that on there own
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apparently our plan is to have two throwers throw half the truck and then switch out and no one two man team should be in there more than an hour and a half without a switch out.
 
Anyone out there have pics they want to share of their metro/green racks set-up for this new process? I am referring to the A&A breakout. I am in R300 & starting in September.
#veryexcited
 
So we're probably about a year into the process. We've had the U-boats for months now and our unload team is now down to something like 3-4 people. We just got a few more U-boats the other day. Another area store is remodeling so we've had a huge increase in traffic during Back to School. (I hear our's is next year.) We get 7 trucks a week ever since maybe a month or two ago.

It's come to a climax in product coming in the last couple days where we had our two Paper aisles pretty much full on the floor, but then have a whole backroom aisle 100% full of backstock, plus a whole extra flat of backstock with nowhere to put it. We've even got three endcaps that have so many different paper products on them. It's absolutely nuts. Something clearly broke either in the store or the DC's end.

As far as store morale, with every single person on Flow being considered Salesfloor now. we've had at least half of the previous Flow Team quit and have hired a couple new people to replace them, but the hiring sign is constantly out front now because turnover is off the charts.

Our sales across the store I believe are up something like 20%, but that's obviously because of the remodel of the other store.
 
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AshTR said:
So we're probably about a year into the process. We've had the U-boats for months now and our unload team is now down to something like 3-4 people. We just got a few more U-boats the other day. Another area store is remodeling so we've had a huge increase in traffic during Back to School. (I hear our's is next year.) We get 7 trucks a week ever since maybe a month or two ago.

It's come to a climax in product coming in the last couple days where we had our two Paper aisles pretty much full on the floor, but then have a whole backroom aisle 100% full of backstock, plus a whole extra flat of backstock with nowhere to put it. We've even got three endcaps that have so many different paper products on them. It's absolutely nuts. Something clearly broke either in the store or the DC's end.

As far as store morale, with every single person on Flow being considered Salesfloor now. we've had at least half of the previous Flow Team quit and have hired a couple new people to replace them, but the hiring sign is constantly out front now because turnover is off the charts.

Our sales across the store I believe are up something like 20%, but that's obviously because of the remodel of the other store.
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4a4.png
 
We just started the new unload process a couple weeks ago. Some of us who were getting scheduled for only 3 hours and usually getting pushed out the door at our scheduled out time are now being scheduled for 4 or more hours and even being asked to stay beyond that, sometimes for significant extra hours. Anyone else seeing this at their store?
I'm liking that I get more hours, but I'm expecting the ax to fall and I'll be back to a piddly little 3-hour shift.
 
FlowTeamChick said:
We just started the new unload process a couple weeks ago. Some of us who were getting scheduled for only 3 hours and usually getting pushed out the door at our scheduled out time are now being scheduled for 4 or more hours and even being asked to stay beyond that, sometimes for significant extra hours. Anyone else seeing this at their store?
I'm liking that I get more hours, but I'm expecting the ax to fall and I'll be back to a piddly little 3-hour shift.
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The unload team at my store all are getting 40hr weeks right now
The other 2 shifts are still at 4hr shifts max
 
I was on a 2 month streak of 40 every week until suddenly they announced that they overspent by 70 hours in spite of the 800 extra flex hours we got due to crushed sales. RIP. Bunch of short ass shifts this week although with the Halloween reset coming up I imagine I'll be back up to 40 p soon with those presentation shifts
 
I accidentally hit OT last week and had the store hunt me down to give me the no OT talk and im like i wouldn't hit OT if my schedule didnt change drastically every day
My paper schedule 20hr 5 days week start at 4am. Vs my real schedule 6days 40hrs
With 2am,3:30am,4am and 12am starts
 
FlowTeamChick said:
We just started the new unload process a couple weeks ago. Some of us who were getting scheduled for only 3 hours and usually getting pushed out the door at our scheduled out time are now being scheduled for 4 or more hours and even being asked to stay beyond that, sometimes for significant extra hours. Anyone else seeing this at their store?
I'm liking that I get more hours, but I'm expecting the ax to fall and I'll be back to a piddly little 3-hour shift.
Click to expand...

We used to have 3 hour shifts but our ETL complained to the new DTL and we all got 4 hour shifts. If we had 3 hour shifts and were forced out then, there would be a lot of times where the unload team would have to leave before the truck since we've had at least 3 3hr + unloads since starting the new process. At our store nobody really gives a shit about your scheduled time so flow can pretty much get as many hours as they want. I've been scheduled for 20 but worked 38+ every week for the last 5 months now. Mostly everyone from the unload team is still scheduled for 4 but stays for 6.
 
With our new uboats this week we've managed to come clean every day this week and we got 6 trucks (which is 2 more than we normally get). It's helped that most days our truck was around 1500 with a lot of Halloween transition we didn't have to push, but I'm honestly pleasantly surprised at how well things have been going this week. It is a lot easier on morale to come in to everything being clean as opposed to coming in and seeing the entire back of the line from days before. I have to give it up to leadership at my store, they have assigned vehicles to both flow tms and sales floor tms to hold people accountable and its worked well. Typically flow breezes through our assigned vehicles and move on so sales floor tms have less to do. I'm still not certain that this will work during Q4, as we still run out of vehicles when we have big trucks (today we had 1900 and we still had stuff stacked on the floor), but things are going better than expected so far.
 
Does anyone have any ideas, ANY at all, for how to best handle the massive amounts of Xmas cardboard and trash that we all know is coming? Let's face it, y'all might think your processes work now but you're still playing at low level on easy difficulty. Can't assume it will work once we're in Q4 nightmare mode.

Firstly the cardboard catch on the back of the uboats is worthless, holds very little and only the bigger boxes will stay on it. What about the 1,040Ă—420^69 smaller boxes like the ones the ornaments come in? My plan as of right now is to fuck the police and use a bunch of guest carts but they might threaten write ups for that, idk. I've already tested using trash bags to hold the tiny boxes from BTS and they just poked holes in the bag. Also thinking that using bigger boxes as trash cans on a flat won't work either because the work space will be at a premium and getting flats in and out was already a nightmare last year. In a perfect world maybe we could appropriate an extra hanger bin to use for trash and park it in the backroom around the corner (we have a backroom door at the back wall of our seasonal block) but of course backroom will be a fucking death trap and there's no getting anything through there. Should I just go ahead and blow my brains out right now?
 
When I detrash tumblers & drinkware for Starbucks, I'll take the biggest box or an empty cup box & throw my small boxes in there.
The larger/medium boxes I'll flatten & use the catch; I'll take the biggest flattened box, fold it & put it in the catch so the smaller ones don't fall thru.
I throw the box of smaller boxes on the bed with as much of the other in the catch.
 
We've always busted the big styrofoam into smaller chunks so it will fit in a trash bag. Plastic fits best in a bag as long as you have separate bags for styrofoam and plastic.

Maybe I can convert the amplified gifting shippers into trash holders 🤔 you know, since we WON'T be using them this year, per myself (get @ me, corporate!)

Toys is another big cardboard monster that I just thought of, possibly even worse than Xmas on some days. Unlike seasonal though, most of the toys boxes seem to be medium size to small and it's hard to get your hands on a huge box to use for trash. Last year we were filling cages with toys trash in under 10 minutes, and our baler guy couldn't keep up with it. R.I.P.
 
Our store decided to keep 1 stack of cages and a few stacks of plastic pallets as a just in case . Without a cardboard guy the backroom was trashed within hours after the bailer got full because nobody thought to call anyone with could make a bale untill vehicles of cardboard was everywhere.
Now we have 3 flow tm thats jobs are to watch the trash area to make sure it stays clean and the last one of them to go home has to sweep and throw away any trash and cardboard thats back there.
Now i think the 2 real tests well be how well we can handle the Christmas rush and then how well we can handle the lack of hours that happens after Christmas. Right now the only reason were coming clean every day is because almost all of the 4am crew (the most experienced crew) gets 40hrs a week and are around 6 days a week
 
can't touch this said:
Does anyone have any ideas, ANY at all, for how to best handle the massive amounts of Xmas cardboard and trash that we all know is coming? Let's face it, y'all might think your processes work now but you're still playing at low level on easy difficulty. Can't assume it will work once we're in Q4 nightmare mode.

Firstly the cardboard catch on the back of the uboats is worthless, holds very little and only the bigger boxes will stay on it. What about the 1,040Ă—420^69 smaller boxes like the ones the ornaments come in? My plan as of right now is to fuck the police and use a bunch of guest carts but they might threaten write ups for that, idk. I've already tested using trash bags to hold the tiny boxes from BTS and they just poked holes in the bag. Also thinking that using bigger boxes as trash cans on a flat won't work either because the work space will be at a premium and getting flats in and out was already a nightmare last year. In a perfect world maybe we could appropriate an extra hanger bin to use for trash and park it in the backroom around the corner (we have a backroom door at the back wall of our seasonal block) but of course backroom will be a fucking death trap and there's no getting anything through there. Should I just go ahead and blow my brains out right now?
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Set fire to it outside. ;)

Seriously, you either break down the boxes flat and put them in the UBoat slot area (yes more will fit than you think.) or you use a flat and stack them on each other.

No you can't be Marvin riding in the Pulp fiction car,
 

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