Archived Can someone settle the debate of STO/SUBT backstocking?

[The Dude Abides]

So, I hate reading this entire thread but here is the facts.....

If you are talking about rebackstocking anything that is pulled during the autos or cafs process by STO'ing and then SUBT 9999 and ReSTO'ing. You are talking about what Anonymous12345 just discussed above and the other guy that he quoted..... Kinda...

ONE EXAMPLE IS, STO/SUBT9999/STO is a bandaid on a problem on the sales floor that needs to be trouble shooted. A perfect example is when a Sales Planner is tied (not set) and a POG fill is not dropped. If the sales planner isn't set/tied and filled properly, the system will automatically generate pulls to fill the floor because accumulator has been increased (to much for this post).

At the end of the day, you need to let the ETL-LOG/ETL-Replen and the ETL-HL or whom ever owns plano. This process can be screwed up by a ton of people but most of the time it is LOG (double locations), Plano (fake ties), and Backroom (underpull, batch burning, and shady caf pushers).

Let me know if you have any more detailed questions.

Thx,

So much is wrong in this post that it makes my brain hurt.

Basically everything Anonymous12345 said is completely true.

 

[NiceGuy]

Wait. I think we are talking about two different things!!!!!

TDA. I invite you to a discussion. Please. Enlighten me.

 

[Guest]

At my store, the goal pull times aren't a big deal or problem. I would say we get the CAF pulls done 99 percent of the time. We may have a rare occurrence when the CAFs roll but it's usually during a holiday or if an ETL or someone can't back up the backroom. I am smart when it comes to the CAF pulls. I start with bakery and deli then go to meat then to dry grocery to freezer then chemicals and pets and to dairy. After that, I get the grocery items in receiving then I go to the GM side and finish softlines. Lately, I've been leaving office for last because of back to school. I try to go in a straight line during the CAF pulls.

 

[NiceGuy]

TDA. I need to repost. What Anonymous and I said both a-line. Anonymous was explaining the process and I was explaining the whys.... STO/SUBT9999/STO is insanely terrible solution if you aren't looping in other leaders to trouble shoot the problem.

To make this clear. STO/SUBT9999/STO without communicating these issues to a leaders is an insanely poor best practice (with minor exceptions like a capacity that is to high). 95% of the time, another process or workcenter is breaking the system and STO/SUBT9999/STO simply voids this problem out.

One day. I will write a novel about the sales accumulator.

 

[The Dude Abides]

First of all, the process is not STO/SUBT9999/STO the STO function is completely unnecessary in the process to begin with. SUBT9999 adds the item to the location without creating errors.

Secondly, the SUBT9999 really should only be used on items that are 100% full on the floor such as recently brought back POG or Sales Planner backstock or items that were literally just pushed by the backroom team member doing SUBT. In those instances the goal is reset the accumulator to account for issues such as what Sigma7 alluded to on the first page.

If I were to attempt to communicate this to any of the ETLs in my store I would be talking way above their comprehension level. My ETL-LOG doesn't even understand what the accumulator is, let alone how it works.

 

[NiceGuy]

TDA, I wrote a bunch of shit but realized we were on the same page.

And then I read your last line and realized that what we were talking about was really some important shit. I was really surprised that a main leader in your building didn't have a basic understanding of the sales accumulator or how the instocks/replenishment process works.

*edit*
B/S

 

[Guest]

Sometimes I think it would be better to just put back stock items in certain locations and then after 5pm, go back and back stock them with STO. Sad but if it's done that way, then I won't hear any bitching about the precious sales accumulator. I've done that sometimes especially at 430, 445, or 455pm. I've put like plastic containers up or paper or water and gone back and back stocked them after 5pm. From the time I get there which is usually 12pm or 1230pm until 5pm, there is the thing which I call "the lock". The lock is the wonderfulness of STO giving me regurgitated back stock as CAF pulls. After 5pm, I am only using SUBT to subtract an item for a guest. After 5pm, I only use STO because there are no more CAF pulls.

 

[keynesian]

A cool trick to check if an item can fit on the floor without physically checking it, is by using the instock tab on item search and look at the on-hand vs capacity. So if you have 10 on-hand and he capacity is 20, then according to the numbers that item should go out. It's only 100% accurate if your on-hands, capacities, and sales floor ties are right but it's a great guide to audit backstock in the backroom.

Our on hands and capacities are off by enormous amounts, I can't imagine its terribly different at other stores. The worst part is, there's nothing we can do about it, because it's mostly mispicks from the DC. We can process the ones that come in with their own DCI label, but for all of the mispicks that might come out of repacks (which they do!) there's no way to process them.

 

[Anonymous12345]

TheDudeAbides: I'm pretty sure using SUBT9999 w/o STO causes an error to the fill-group not the TM. I tested it before a long time ago, but I vaguely remember the result of it, so I'm going to test it again and get back to you.

Jackwastedlife99: If you don't reset the accumulator after the 5pm pulls you will just be creating extra work for the flow team who will have to pull it in their Auto-fills. But you said your TL doesn't want you using it, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Keynesian: On-hands and capacities are off but I wouldn't say by enormous amounts. That probably means your in-stock team is excessively zeroing counts w/o checking untied endcaps and checking the backroom for un located product. And yes there can be mis-picks but I bet if you have contests for mispicks, your team will bring it to your attention more often.

NiceGuy: Can you explain why when you backstock Plano backstock from a new set and it's legit backstock, why does it trigger in the 12pm CAF?? What is someone doing wrong to make that happen? Because this happens every time like clock work if SUBT9999 is not used. I'm pretty sure it because of what Sigma7 said on p.1. The accumulator is flawed, I wish it would base it more off on-hand and capacity. And when backstock it should just prompt for every item it thinks can go out but if the team member overrides it, it shouldn't pull in the next CAF, plain and simple and you shouldn't have to use SUBT9999.

But I'm know Target HQ knows the accumulator system is flawed and their looking for ways to improve it but it will take time to implement such dramatic changes.

There is some human error involved too, like overstocking, EXFs, count changes, capacities , etc. but there are things that aren't.

If the accumulator issue was fixed I'm sure it would save 2-5 hours per store and multiply that by 1700, that's a lot of saved payroll.

 

[keynesian]

Keynesian: On-hands and capacities are off but I wouldn't say by enormous amounts. That probably means your in-stock team is excessively zeroing counts w/o checking untied endcaps and checking the backroom for un located product. And yes there can be mis-picks but I bet if you have contests for mispicks, your team will bring it to your attention more often.

NiceGuy: Can you explain why when you backstock Plano backstock from a new set and it's legit backstock, why does it trigger in the 12pm CAF?? What is someone doing wrong to make that happen? Because this happens every time like clock work if SUBT9999 is not used. I'm pretty sure it because of what Sigma7 said on p.1. The accumulator is flawed, I wish it would base it more off on-hand and capacity. And when backstock it should just prompt for every item it thinks can go out but if the team member overrides it, it shouldn't pull in the next CAF, plain and simple and you shouldn't have to use SUBT9999.

But I'm know Target HQ knows the accumulator system is flawed and their looking for ways to improve it but it will take time to implement such dramatic changes.

There is some human error involved too, like overstocking, EXFs, count changes, capacities , etc. but there are things that aren't.

If the accumulator issue was fixed I'm sure it would save 2-5 hours per store and multiply that by 1700, that's a lot of saved payroll.

So the plano thing I can talk about specifically, though somebody tangentially mentioned this earlier. Two things happen when you do the sales floor tie, obviously you change the schematics, aisle number, etc. and you change the capacities. While the capacities affect the accumulator they are not a direct relationship - changing the capacity alone does not change the accumulator itself.

Now when you drop a "NEW POG FILL" for the associated POG# the only thing that happens to the accumulator is the addition of the new DPCIs and the expanded capacities of current DPCIs. It does not, I repeat, does NOT reset or decrease the accumulator for for all associated DPCIs. So if a DPCIs capacity decreased from, say, 2 to 1 on the shelf, when you backstock one of that DPCI the accumulator does not automatically reset to thinking that the shelf only needs one. It will actually constantly try to pull that 1 out of backstock for that DPCI until either A) you reset the accumulator B) the accumulator resets itself due to additional receipts or C) you sell the other one on the shelf. The only 'organic' way for the accumulator to be reset properly after this is for your store to sell both eaches of said DPCI, have it get zeroed out via point of sale, and then get another each of that DPCI sent in on another truck - which happens more often than you may think.

Our store stopped using the SUBT9999 process a year ago, and the errors remain about the same. Honestly most errors in the accumulator are human made. Somebody may stock 24 eaches of regular pepto bismol because they don't realize that half of that shelf space is reserved for cherry pepto bismol. An error like that will usually go unnoticed until a POG reset. By that point, the counts are already off because instocks/inventory counted what was on the shelf as the out, instead of actually auditing what was in the shelf space.

Now in terms of fixing our on hand situation, I respect your position Anonymous12345, and yes holding constests for mispicks would surely improve our accuracy. However, there is a LONG list of reasons why our on-hands are off by huge amounts. We regularly receive at least 5-20 cases per trailer that have labels for other store numbers, and no label for our store. Due to time constraints our only real choice is to push this product with the rest of our truck. We also receive at least 10-30 mispick cases per trailer. Over half of our flow team was hired in the last six months or later. They don't even know what the letters DPCI stand for - if I were to explain to one of them to read the DPCI printed on the side of the box and on the label and then check to see if it corresponds to the DPCI on the shelf strip I would probably blow their minds. Half of the time the mispicks are right next to the actual DPCI on the floor, so the pusher never realizes this and just puts the product in the right location. It's easy to tell when shampoo has a label for paper. It's less easy to tell when conditioner has a label for shampoo. Plus, I don't know about your store, but ours is constantly understaffed - the actual overnight backroom team has not finished a truck since february.

Also, you seem knowledgeable about the process - is there any way to identify and process mispicks out of the repacks? The closest thing I've ever seen to a repack receipt is the security list in electronics. Would you have to go through every repack in the store to identify all repack mispicks?

 

[Anonymous12345]

Keynesian: "Also, you seem knowledgeable about the process - is there any way to identify and process mispicks out of the repacks? The closest thing I've ever seen to a repack receipt is the security list in electronics. Would you have to go through every repack in the store to identify all repack mispicks?"

- I'll have to get back to you on this one, it might be in the load summary detail report on RWT. I don't think you can process a mispick with the repack label, you probably have to change the count through research or count update form. But I'm going to test it out and see.

So are you basically saying just deal with the large CAF pull after backstocking POG backstock lol. Do you have any ideas to prevent this from happening? SUBT9999 is just too time consuming when there is large amounts of backstock and having a 2-4 hour CAF is very time consuming too. I still have the team use it for small amounts of backstock with no locations and SPL backstock, FDC backstock, and I used to do it with POG backstock but now that SUBT is in the web apps, it's too much to ask for and even when it was in RF apps it was really time consuming.

I actually have one more idea that I haven't tried yet. Doesn't using Stand Alone RSCH reset the accumulator? What if you were to scan all of the POG backstock and just re-enter the on-hand for all backstock that doesn't have existing BR locations, maybe wait like 30-60 minutes, then backstock it, and see if it triggers in the CAF.

Someone once told me if you leave a killed SPL backstock for 24hrs it won't trigger to pull, but I don't think that's true. But if it is I wonder if that applies for POG backstock too?

I'm going to test all of this and see what works best....

 

[keynesian]

So are you basically saying just deal with the large CAF pull after backstocking POG backstock lol. Do you have any ideas to prevent this from happening? SUBT9999 is just too time consuming when there is large amounts of backstock and having a 2-4 hour CAF is very time consuming too. I still have the team use it for small amounts of backstock with no locations and SPL backstock, FDC backstock, and I used to do it with POG backstock but now that SUBT is in the web apps, it's too much to ask for and even when it was in RF apps it was really time consuming.

I actually have one more idea that I haven't tried yet. Doesn't using Stand Alone RSCH reset the accumulator? What if you were to scan all of the POG backstock and just re-enter the on-hand for all backstock that doesn't have existing BR locations, maybe wait like 30-60 minutes, then backstock it, and see if it triggers in the CAF.

Someone once told me if you leave a killed SPL backstock for 24hrs it won't trigger to pull, but I don't think that's true. But if it is I wonder if that applies for POG backstock too?

I'm going to test all of this and see what works best....

As soon as we stopped using SUBT we did start leaving some backstock sit in the backroom all day, never more than 24 hours though, usually POG just does their own backstock and strictly in STO. I haven't ever pulled a CAF so I don't know if the pog backstock all comes back out at noon or not. I do know that if you break SPLs without checking their home locations before backstocking them that the system will pull them again if they're needed to fill the home location.

I know that when we had a large grocery dry reset all at once in the course of a week that we would let that backstock sit for 24 hours before backstocking it - and that did not pull out unnecessary backstock. Yet when we reset pets the same way a lot of the stuff that we had previously trapped in the transition steel constantly pulled out with out autofills even though the new primary and secondary locations were both full.

Like I said earlier, I think most of our accumulator problems eventually get fixed by new receipts more so than anything else. A lot of the dayside backstock seems to be things that kept pulling all day but wouldn't go out, and they usually leave that for us to do overnight.

As for your research idea, I'm not really sure how that would affect the accumulator. I was always under the impression that the accumulator really wasn't affected by the counts - only by receipts which reset it, point of sale, new pog fills, and challenge. Since the accumulator basically only runs up, the only thing that changing the counts would do is to add more for your lows and outs, I don't think it would draw down the accumulator for the stuff you have too much of. One little trick I've used before, is I've STOed a challenged item in an empty backroom location - one that I knew was full on the floor. After STOing it, I then LOCUed that location. When I go back to STO it the challenge prompt did not come up. I don't know if this would work 100% of the time, or if it is even resetting the accumulator in the process, but it keeps the system from pulling that item.

 

[Anonymous12345]

Keynesian: I don't think receiving the product will always reset the accumulator either because if the accumulator wants 20 to fulfill it and we receive only 10, but 5 go out, it will likely trigger as challenge and pull in the CAF, and point of sale will only increase the accumulator to want more, challenge always triggers in CAFs.

Are you positive by STOing and LOCUing challenge it doesn't trigger in the CAF. Because you mentioned you never pull CAFs. Do you work overnight, if you do, you wouldn't know what was pulled in the noon CAFs but you could always drop a manual for that particular fill-group that you back stocked the challenge and see if it triggers. It will likely trigger other items too but you can just leave those in the gun. I know it stops it from prompting push to floor but I'm going to test this one out too and see if it still pulls.

Do you guys intentionally leave your backstock for more than 24hrs so it doesn't trigger in pulls, or just because you didn't have time to get to it right away. I try to never leave backstock laying around for long because then you should technically re push it because it could of sold by then.

The sales floor always checks home locations for killed SPL b/s but it will still trigger in CAFs w/o resetting the accumulator, if it didn't have existing backroom locations.

I think the biggest issue is most stores just deal with it and never MySupport the issue. If more stores would MySupport this issue and let your supervisors know, it probably would enlighten people more on this problem and it would hopefully get the problem resolved sooner.

We should post one of those questionnaires and ask everyone on this site, how big is your 11am CAF after FDC and 12pm CAF after a DC truck has been back stocked, I would bet most stores have 2-4 hours pulls, when it should be under 1hr.

 

[Anonymous12345]

I figured out how to make a questionnaire, let's see if we get some responses lol

I am usually really good at solving problems and streamlining things to make processes more effective and productive but this is one issue that has plagued me for years and I can't find a reasonable solution. I hoping this site can help out with this and maybe help other store too.

 

[keynesian]

Keynesian: I don't think receiving the product will always reset the accumulator either because if the accumulator wants 20 to fulfill it and we receive only 10, but 5 go out, it will likely trigger as challenge and pull in the CAF, and point of sale will only increase the accumulator to want more, challenge always triggers in CAFs.

Are you positive by STOing and LOCUing challenge it doesn't trigger in the CAF. Because you mentioned you never pull CAFs. Do you work overnight, if you do, you wouldn't know what was pulled in the noon CAFs but you could always drop a manual for that particular fill-group that you back stocked the challenge and see if it triggers. It will likely trigger other items too but you can just leave those in the gun. I know it stops it from prompting push to floor but I'm going to test this one out too and see if it still pulls.

Do you guys intentionally leave your backstock for more than 24hrs so it doesn't trigger in pulls, or just because you didn't have time to get to it right away. I try to never leave backstock laying around for long because then you should technically re push it because it could of sold by then.

The sales floor always checks home locations for killed SPL b/s but it will still trigger in CAFs w/o resetting the accumulator, if it didn't have existing backroom locations.

I think the biggest issue is most stores just deal with it and never MySupport the issue. If more stores would MySupport this issue and let your supervisors know, it probably would enlighten people more on this problem and it would hopefully get the problem resolved sooner.

We should post one of those questionnaires and ask everyone on this site, how big is your 11am CAF after FDC and 12pm CAF after a DC truck has been back stocked, I would bet most stores have 2-4 hours pulls, when it should be under 1hr.

Yes, I'm overnight so I don't know how long our first set of pulls are (I think pfresh drops at 8am and everything else drops at 11am) and I don't know exactly whats getting pulled. The few times I've stayed that late I can tell you this much: only some of the challenge ended up getting repulled, and its definitely not all of the POG backstock... but almost everyday the first set of pulls brings with it some amount of backstock - regardless of what was set the night before. The dayside shift leaves the vast majority of their backstock for the overnight team. I know that the items I've used the LOCU trick with are never sitting there to be backstocked the next night, so it likely isn't getting pulled during the day - unless they're just flexing everything out.

As for the differences between truck days and non truck days, we only get about 20 non truck days per year, so I really don't have any perspective to compare to in that regard.

As for the receipt issue what you say is true, if the accumulator needs 20 and they only send 12 of a DPCI then it should prompt as a challenge - whats more typical at our store is that if the accumulator needs 20 they'll send 24, so nothing would show up as challenge.

Also the lack of backstocking is far from intentional. The STL and ETLs have given direction to the salesfloor and backroom teams during the day to leave the 7:00 cafs for the overnight team to push, and to leave all backstock after 2:30pm for the overnight team. They use all of these people to zone, reshop, and backup... no assistance towards logistics in the afternoons. One lone backroom team member from 2:30pm-9pm, and nobody from 9pm-10:30pm. and they wonder why our logistics is so fucked up at a $60,000,000+/year pfresh store.

 

[Anonymous12345]

Oh that sucks to hear. A lot of people think since overnight has the most payroll and since it's overnight you can dump some extra workload on them, but they forget you have all that payroll to push and backstock a 2000-2500 piece truck and get everyone out on time, which is not an easy task.

I'm going to test out all of the things we discussed and get back to you. I'm determined to fix this issue lol

You can always check your CAF monitor on RWT to see how big your 12s are, and you likely have a 730am CAF for what was qmosed

 

[Anonymous12345]

If we can find a fix for over pulling it would benefit the day and overnight team. Day would have less to pull and backstock, overnight would walk in to less push and backstock.

 

[keynesian]

Oh that sucks to hear. A lot of people think since overnight has the most payroll and since it's overnight you can dump some extra workload on them, but they forget you have all that payroll to push and backstock a 2000-2500 piece truck and get everyone out on time, which is not an easy task.

I'm going to test out all of the things we discussed and get back to you. I'm determined to fix this issue lol

You can always check your CAF monitor on RWT to see how big your 12s are, and you likely have a 730am CAF for what was qmosed

If we can find a fix for over pulling it would benefit the day and overnight team. Day would have less to pull and backstock, overnight would walk in to less push and backstock.

It would help us a lot for sure, especially for the POG backstock because that can pull extra backstock for weeks at a time if it doesn't sell. And yes, they dump lots of extra workload on overnight, which is odd because the opening team always has to finish our work. Actually what usually ends up happening is that sometime around noon, when all of the dayside ETLs are in the building and both the backroom opener and closer are in, and the instocks scan is finished, there are about 15 people backstocking all at once until everything is finished, it usually takes them an hour (or so I'm told).

What makes the accumulator especially troublesome for us is the fact that a bunch of stuff sits out of location in backroom vehicles for so long that a lot of that stuff actually needs to be repushed... we just don't have time to. Also, being so high volume a lot of the accumulator problems eventually fix themselves - if the accumulator is accidentally up by 4 higher than it should be, and we sell 8 that day, and the system pulls 12, we usually only have about 4-8 on hand by that point to even pull, so the accumulator thinks everything is alright. Once the new product gets sent in, its adjusted to the new capacity/sales configuration, starting from scratch.

I remember when I was at a lower volume 4am store there was a bunch of stuff that would pull out with every CAF if the system wanted it... there were some items that wouldn't allow you to reset the accumulator with subt9999.... and that was when I figured out the LOCU trick.

The only other thing I remember that might be relevant - one time our reverse logistics was complaining about us not scanning security packs (the truck scanner was just throwing them in the cage) and she said it was causing the security pulls to be really huge for the CAFs and autofills.

Maybe the corporate people who monitor this site will have pity on us and create a new application in RF apps just to reset the accumulator, lol.

 

[keynesian]

Also, I should ask - when you do these really large pulls after the RDC truck backstock gets done, is most of the stuff going out? or is it coming back? if most of it's going out then thats not an accumulator issue - thats an issue with the flow team. Thats the reason our pulls are always so large... lots of stuff never gets pushed properly the first time and it all goes back out.

 

[Anonymous12345]

We don't scan the truck anymore but I don't believe scanning the truck affects the accumulator, I believe it is used just to differentiate what is push and what is blackline.

That's interesting that you have 15 or so people backstocking at noon, is the leadership team content with that strategy. Most overnight stores have everything done before store open, unless there is a lot of POG backstock. I'm guessing they don't want overnight to overspend payroll and rather use their resources during the day but then that hurts the vibe service on the floor at a peak sales hour.

 

[Anonymous12345]

No I'm religious about auditing backstock and the FDC team pushes and back stocks so they are less inclined to backstock stuff that can go out. And I'm not saying every single backstock item will generate in the CAFs but it will increase your pull times by about 30-60 minutes for FDC and about 1-2 hours for DC. I believe FDC is a bit tricky and there is a lot more factors over there why items trigger in pulls.

 

[keynesian]

We don't scan the truck anymore but I don't believe scanning the truck affects the accumulator, I believe it is used just to differentiate what is push and what is blackline.

That's interesting that you have 15 or so people backstocking at noon, is the leadership team content with that strategy. Most overnight stores have everything done before store open, unless there is a lot of POG backstock. I'm guessing they don't want overnight to overspend payroll and rather use their resources during the day but then that hurts the vibe service on the floor at a peak sales hour.

I doubt they're content with the strategy - but by target's own calculations we shouldn't get finished with the backstock until 9am (assuming no call offs) and the latest we're ever scheduled until is 7am - and thats assuming we're walking into a clean backroom, which we never do. It's odd, because even though we have 7 trucks a week, our backroom team is still only 7 people (same size as a store that takes 3 trucks a week) - meaning we only ever have 5 there on a given night - one goes to receiving and the other four do the autofills, the backstock side of the line from the unload, and all of the light duty backstock. the least we've ever left by 7am was around 15 vehicles of backstock, and its usually more like 40.

 

[konk]

I always pull it unless I worked it myself. I only pull the 4's and 5's and I know my coworkers were burning batches all day. I rarely have backstock from the 5's that I work.

 

[StackerMistress]

Some of y'all are completely abusing the SUBT999 function. I can only imagine how big your research batches are.

Also, I should ask - when you do these really large pulls after the RDC truck backstock gets done, is most of the stuff going out? or is it coming back? if most of it's going out then thats not an accumulator issue - thats an issue with the flow team. Thats the reason our pulls are always so large... lots of stuff never gets pushed properly the first time and it all goes back out.

Yes, this right here. Just yesterday we had a repack full of baby food come back as backstock at 1:30... exactly in the same order that the morning BR TM sorted it in the box when she pulled it at 6 am. It wasn't even touched. She stuck a green clip on it and put it back on the line. Came back a while later with only a couple of items in it.

Same thing for challenge. Morning team always wants to backstock challenge and use SUBT9999 on it, but, the vast majority of the time, at least half the items go out. Don't blame the broken system when it's human laziness that's at fault.

 

[konk]

I'm guilty of backstocking challenge just because I want a clean backroom. I'll stop that now. It also helps that it's easier to stick a blue clip on it!