UDC Here

LordCommander said:
Just looking to see what some of the questions people from the stores or the RDCs have.
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Oh wow boy do I. Alright. What department are you in? That would obviously have a lot of bearing on the questions you can answer.
 
I am in the pack to store (PTS) department, and am trained in our universal sorting system (USS)department as well as online ordering replacement (OOR)
 
LordCommander said:
I am in the pack to store (PTS) department, and am trained in our universal sorting system (USS)department as well as online ordering replacement (OOR)
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Huh. Those are new terms to me. Does that mean you could possibly explain why the green repacks are always so empty? 😁
 
I can! So it all depends on what SSZ we are working, and what each store orders. Some stores only need a few items from us, and depending on the stock zone, it leaves a lot of room left over. We can't switch to a smaller box for small orders because we don't have access to which orders will be smaller in size and could fit into a smaller OPB, or overpack box.

Currently, we are receiving extremely low density waves of product due to low demand with Covid-19, so there are a lot of OPBs with only a few items.
 
Is there a reason that box has to leave the UDC like that though? Can’t it wait to be filled more before shipping it with 1 belt inside? Or can’t that belt be combined into a different box instead?
 
It would be a logistical nightmare to try and make that happen. Each OPB has a barcode on it that the system tracks to get to each store, so on the store side they can scan it and see exactly what they are supposed to have.

If we were to combine boxes, our output from the building would slow to almost a standstill. If all my aisle are packing, and each aisle has 600+ orders with each order going to a different store, we'd need to add a whole new department and new machinery to sort out each box, have people combine them and reassign all the labels so they'd all be tied to one label. It wouldn't make any sense for my building or the company to lose out on speed and efficiency.

I do sympathize with folks in the stores though, as I can see how it is inconvenient on their end.
 
When you guys have UDC boxes without any label, what do you do with them? I think we used to take them to the Inbound problem area but now I think we take them to the 60 dock and someone there just systematically forces those items to stores.
 
So if we have a box where the label has come off( or in cases of large orders and due to human error a new box was not added), our conveyor system will not send them to outbound. It circles around in our USS department, and will either be assigned to a random store or sent to an online purchases DC.
 
What is up with the introduction of the purple repacks? Are they being used interchangeably, are they slotted to take over entirely? And so forth.
Do you have any experience with OB at the UDC?
 
So the purple OPBs were introduced as a way for us to speed up our process. The green OPBs had less of a lifetime use due to their size, and we were constantly discarding overused boxes that came back from the stores. Given the smaller dimensions of the purple OPBs, they should hold up longer structurally. Our plan is to switch over entirely to the purple OPBs.

Unfortunately, I do not have experience in OB. Only a general understanding.
 
Not a problem.

OPB- OverPack Boxes
PTS- Pack To Store
USS- Universal Sorting System
OOR- Online Order Replacement/Replenishment
SSZ- Store Stock Zone
IB- Inbound
OB- Outbound

If you need any others, feel free to ask
 
UDC? how is that different than RDC? (regional distribution center?)
online ordering replacement -- what is that?

OPB - I think we call those Repacks at the store level. We have different colors for different areas of the store.
 
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UDC is short for Upstream Distribution Center. We deal with product that is more difficult to predict purchases for. My UDC deals with softlines products and will change between seasons. Our OBPs are sent to a selection of RDCs that will then be sent from their inbound department to outbound directly because they directly send to the stores we support.

OOR strictly only sends out product for online order DCs. Stores only deal with that stock when we get liquidation labels, which will be strictly clearance.

And yes, OPBs are what you call repack. We use the green and purple ones, as well as any smaller white ones for security (Apple) products.
 
ManMythMachine said:
When you guys have UDC boxes without any label, what do you do with them? I think we used to take them to the Inbound problem area but now I think we take them to the 60 dock and someone there just systematically forces those items to stores.
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You mean at an RDC if the label came off the box?
Then you can just do a single label reprint, when you get to the label id field just scan the little white label on the side of the box and it should reprint the top label. Predistro works the same way with the shipping label.
If it says it already diverted then I go to CIS, scan the little white label to get the store it should’ve gone to and just throw it on the trailer it’s supposedly already on, and look at whatever UDC boxes are visible to make sure the label didn’t come off on another box that was for a different store.
If it says invalid then we have to create a new overpack label and send it to our highest volume store. Some of our sorter people just slap a label for that store on it and send it without tying the contents, so the store gets free stuff sometimes...
 
LordCommander said:
So the purple OPBs were introduced as a way for us to speed up our process. The green OPBs had less of a lifetime use due to their size, and we were constantly discarding overused boxes that came back from the stores. Given the smaller dimensions of the purple OPBs, they should hold up longer structurally. Our plan is to switch over entirely to the purple OPBs.

Unfortunately, I do not have experience in OB. Only a general understanding.
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Less of a question and more of a personal favor, but please please please tell the OB team to keep a dedicated seperate noncon pallet for MCIM and nothing else so we can just scan the labels and not have to down stack two pallets, seperate the MCIM from the rest, and build a new one back up every day! It also lets us just scan the labels and shove them back in the pouch rather than having to label everything ourselves too 😁 I have zero sympathy passing that headache downstream when they make us palletize repacks for them.
 
LordCommander said:
MCIM? And I will send this up the my superiors. May I ask how it impacts you on your side?
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I honestly have yet to figure out what it stands for or why we call it MCIM, but it's an online fulfillment center that we act as a filter for. Almost half of what we reciece in a UDC (slightly exaggerated) passes straight through us to the online fulfillment center. This includes certain non conveyable items.
When we receive UDC non con, often it is pallets of infant furniture, ice melt, and winter wiper fluid. And (although the labels are always out of order) we sort them door to door like normal.
The issue with MCIM is that we will sometimes receive a pallet that is a LOT of small little boxes. And almost all of these go to MCIM. It can take hours to down stack a pallet of 200 smalls, IUP each box, search through the labels, then scan them in and so forth.
In a perfect world the pallet contains nothing but MCIM product, we open the pouch, scan all labels, and put the labels back in the pouch and never have to break the shrink wrap.
But every single time, there is always a handful of boxes that DONT go to MCIM. Requiring us to go through the whole pallet to find them and rebuild the pallet again before dropping it off. You can see how this is a giant waste of time. Happened to me today in fact.
I know you said your UDC focuses on clothing so it might have nothing to do with you guys.
T3004 is MCIM by the way. Dont really care if that reveals too much.
 
Wow, glad I don’t work near a fulfillment center.
Stupid question, but do you know if anyone has contacted the UDC about it? Seems like that’d be something to email their feedback account with every time it happens, especially if it’s that time consuming.
 
Luck said:
I honestly have yet to figure out what it stands for or why we call it MCIM, but it's an online fulfillment center that we act as a filter for. Almost half of what we reciece in a UDC (slightly exaggerated) passes straight through us to the online fulfillment center. This includes certain non conveyable items.
When we receive UDC non con, often it is pallets of infant furniture, ice melt, and winter wiper fluid. And (although the labels are always out of order) we sort them door to door like normal.
The issue with MCIM is that we will sometimes receive a pallet that is a LOT of small little boxes. And almost all of these go to MCIM. It can take hours to down stack a pallet of 200 smalls, IUP each box, search through the labels, then scan them in and so forth.
In a perfect world the pallet contains nothing but MCIM product, we open the pouch, scan all labels, and put the labels back in the pouch and never have to break the shrink wrap.
But every single time, there is always a handful of boxes that DONT go to MCIM. Requiring us to go through the whole pallet to find them and rebuild the pallet again before dropping it off. You can see how this is a giant waste of time. Happened to me today in fact.
I know you said your UDC focuses on clothing so it might have nothing to do with you guys.
T3004 is MCIM by the way. Dont really care if that reveals too much.
Click to expand...

I will talk to my IBOB OMs and see how we can best solve this issue. Perhaps we can get this info out to the other UDCs and work on a plan together
 
LordCommander said:
I will talk to my IBOB OMs and see how we can best solve this issue. Perhaps we can get this info out to the other UDCs and work on a plan together
Click to expand...
That would be fantastic. I dont really think it would be all that much more work UDC side either.
 
LordCommander said:
So the purple OPBs were introduced as a way for us to speed up our process. The green OPBs had less of a lifetime use due to their size, and we were constantly discarding overused boxes that came back from the stores. Given the smaller dimensions of the purple OPBs, they should hold up longer structurally. Our plan is to switch over entirely to the purple OPBs.

Unfortunately, I do not have experience in OB. Only a general understanding.
Click to expand...
The purple ones are a little smaller, correct? Idk if you know, but does anyone know if the new purple repacks fit on a single tray in the sorter? I’ve never been ob trained but heard the green boxes were on 2 trays on the sorter. Anyone have any insight?
 

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