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

Backroom81 said:
It took our regional VP showing up and actually looking in the backroom for more than 30 seconds to make it stop.
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we had a similar problem not as extreme as yours we just kept sending it back on the sweeps truck. got a few nasty letters but told them you keep sending them to us we will keep sending them back.
 
That Target Canada article is pretty revealing as to what Target's ultimate problem is. Notice how it mentions several times that "people were afraid to speak out" and "nobody wanted to be THAT guy" (Target's hivemind culture of yes-men) and analysts fudging their metrics (Target's overemphasis on optics over results, or culture that encourages such an emphasis). Target Canada had some passive aggressive Minnesotan weenie running their expansion and boy did it show. In any business environment or industry you want clear and unambiguous communication and facts on the ground, not this pussy beating around the bush bullshit where everybody is peer pressured into silence for fear of rocking the boat. Even if Steinhafel hadn't been immensely high on 30 years of prior success, the lack of transparency (Minnesota Nice) would have paralyzed things anyway.
 
Backroom81 said:
Product lead time should only dictate the amount kept at the DCs. Most stores have a truck schedule where as long as product is at the DC, the lead time is only a day or two once the stock drops below the amount necessary for replenishment. It is far more efficient for a pallet of a certain DPCI to be held in storage in 1 spot at the DC and sent out as necessary to the stores than it is to blast dozens of stores with it at once whether they need it or not.

For most product in most stores, it should be as simple as "when o/h drops below max capacity - case size + projected sales until product arrives at store, then ship". For example, a case of deodorant carries 6 eaches and the floor capacity is 12. If I have 12 on hand and sell 4 and the item is forecasted to sell another 2 by the next time I can get it on the truck, then send it. Since we get a truck daily, it's not likely I'm going to sell the other 8 before it comes in. If I was a low volume store, the chance of selling the rest is even lower.

Contrast this with a real life example of our current system. I received 30 bikes of just 1 DPCI during the holiday season. Ok, it's the holidays and it's going in the ad. It's a little ambitious as we've never sold that many of that particular bike before in previous seasons but whatever. Our bike builder makes sure to display them prominently and...only slightly more sales than usual. Than we find out we're the only store in our district to even receive them. A major metroplex and 1 store gets 30 ad bikes and everyone else has to tell prospective buyers to drive to us?

As a result, we sold about half of them and it took the entire following year to sell the rest (while still getting them in from the DC). How many bikes would have been sold if they had allocated the available stock in a way that wasn't stupid? How many people said "screw driving halfway across the city, I'll just get a bike from Wal-Mart instead"?


After 20 years at Target, I call bullshit on that. I have seen literally hundreds, if not thousands of examples to the contrary.

The absolute worst example I can think of is canned vegetables at my store. One year, we received 4 pallets of assorted canned Del-Monte for the holidays. That by itself is no big deal, it's the holiday season and we can expect to sell those. In the latter half of the season, they kept coming in and replenishing those sales and we still had 3 pallets total by the end of January. That by itself should be no big deal. Using a replenishment system that wasn't retarded, we should be able to make sure our o/h counts stayed up to date and sell through them eventually without further replenishment from the DC. After all, if you have literally 1500 cans of cut green beans in location and the o/h is accurate, obviously the system should take that into account right?

Nope. They kept fucking coming in all year; faster than we could sell them. By the next holiday season, we had 4 pallets of vegetables in location and received another 4 for the holiday allocation. We had tried multiple times to sweep them back but couldn't. Since they came in as palletized assortments, they didn't come with the original plastic wrap that the casepacks do. They came in as loose traypacks arranged on the pallet which was then shrink-wrapped. Since sweeps required all original case packaging, they got sent right back. It took our regional VP showing up and actually looking in the backroom for more than 30 seconds to make it stop.
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Did you change the capacity to like 1? lol
 
Autoorder.exe thought it could bamboozle me by sending me 900 of the Opalhouse egg chairs that come in the gargantuan boxes, but joke's on you Mr. Roboto, I detrashed a bunch and as it happens, the box is only a bit smaller than a trash cage, so onto a flat it goes. I've already consulted my rules-lawyer and according to him DTL can't say shit because they're not trash cages :^)
 
most of inbound is reeeeeeeing because the last 6 trucks have been massive and the repacks are being sent in quantities that defy all understanding, but I personally hope it continues forever so that I can keep on maxing out this 40
 
flow4areasonuno said:
Same. Truck unload takes 3 hours at the MOST. No TM in existence will sign up for 3 hour shifts.
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We normally take a break when the truck is done and then push for the rest of the shift. We try to get as much out there as we can before we leave if we only have a 4/4 and a half hour shift. Sometimes it takes less than 2 hours, sometimes it takes almost 3 hours, but we always have something to do after the truck unload.
 
graffiti said:
There might be some to use it as a part time gig before/after a second job, if given set days and not being threatened with coachings for not staying late at the lead's whim... So, lol. Yeah. Not likely.
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If I was a new TM being told this I would make plans to get a new job ASAP (I'm doing this now, but that's another matter). I live a short distance away from my store, and a 3 hour shift would be entirely pointless in coming in for, even with gas this cheap. Our store's in a fair sized city, but a lot of the employees come from the rural areas around here, and the drive in can be 20 miles...definitely not worth the drive for 3 measly hours, even with $15/hr


Also unlikely because we have several major colleges and a community one as well near our store. Most of our employees are students, and they might work here for that, being in the area for class and all, but for the pressure the job is getting...nah. Nah.
 
flow4areasonuno said:
Same. Truck unload takes 3 hours at the MOST. No TM in existence will sign up for 3 hour shifts.
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our inbound does unload, detrashing softlines/cosmetics, or pushes priority 1. and 2 sometimes move to pog. 6-8 hour shifts depending on the day. They are the fastest most experienced team members in the store.
 
Ashfromoldsite said:
our inbound does unload, detrashing softlines/cosmetics, or pushes priority 1. and 2 sometimes move to pog. 6-8 hour shifts depending on the day. They are the fastest most experienced team members in the store.
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Wish I could transfer to your store. I've been getting one four hour shift a week since January. Just let me unload the truck, push the freight and leave me alone. Stopping to deal w guests just slows things down.
 
ntauctions said:
Wish I could transfer to your store. I've been getting one four hour shift a week since January. Just let me unload the truck, push the freight and leave me alone. Stopping to deal w guests just slows things down.
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This is a slight change from 2 months ago. We aren’t fully modernized but getting there. We did have inbound just unload and go home but that only lasted a few weeks.
 
I think my time at Target has finally come to an end. They were sending us home early and a lot of us are still stuck at 12 hours a week. An yet--nothing is getting done! Is this really the best way to boost profits? To hell with this job, if you're like me, you'd be better off working somewhere that pays less because the hours will at least make up for it.
 
KindaOverIt said:
I think my time at Target has finally come to an end. They were sending us home early and a lot of us are still stuck at 12 hours a week. An yet--nothing is getting done! Is this really the best way to boost profits? To hell with this job, if you're like me, you'd be better off working somewhere that pays less because the hours will at least make up for it.
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Yeah, this really boils down to nothing getting done properly. You would think it would be the opposite but it almost seems like SFS was much easier during the holiday season than it is now. Even though we were busier then, lots of people were getting lots of hours to get stuff done. Maybe this is all part of the "modernization" thing.
 

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