Archived Carton standard

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Is 40 cases an hour actually attainable with priority 2 push?

I have been through a number of GMEs who just can't keep up.

If they happened to keep up they get burnt out really fast.

I'm thinking the areas are too big for all the tasks.

I have one for stationary getting a 5.5 hour shift.

One for bedding and bath getting a 7 hour shift.

One for Home (Kitchen, Home Improvement, Home Decor, Home storage and Furniture) getting 8 hours.

A repack person who does all repacks for the ones above except stationary. (This position is going away next week though) they get 6 hour shifts.

A bulk person (also going away next week) does bulk plastics, furniture, ihl furniture, bulk pets and bulk paper. This person gets 8 hours.

One person for seasonal 6 or 7 hour shift

We get 7 to 8 trucks per week. Past month they have been 2000+ pieces.

We are drowning in freight. Morale is in the toilet. TMs are dropping like flies. How close do you hold TMs to the 40/hr standard. It seems like essentials has no problem but they can take one uboat out for one or two aisles and my teams uboats span 10 aisles.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.
 
Man, I would KILL to have someone jump into repacks with me. At first I was reading the OP's post and thought it suspiciously sounded like my store, but we never had a repacks person. Ever. We are beginning to get behind at our store. We had a little bit of bumps here and there, depending on what the areas were doing (like stationary having massive truck due to BTS before it was set, bed/bath before back to college set). The burn out is real and you really don't want to cut those hours. If morale is in the toilet, cutting hours to hire someone else to cut an area would devastate the TMs and then you'll be starting from scratch with a newbie. 40 case stock in an hour IS doable, but even I have missed the mark. If the vehicles were like... right there... and I wouldn't have to run between my area and backroom, I would be on point most days if not faster. But heck, running a flat between groups of guests, some days getting heavy backstock... this just takes time. If your 40 is spread between multiple vehicles...grrr. Then if you're not out there fast enough you're getting told you're not pushing it fast enough. But literally, you're moving as fast as you can. Then after a while your arms become noodles. Stamina. You will inevitably slow down as time goes on unless you work out... and even then...

And repacks. Having your team do repacks. I finally can push mine in an acceptable, average time. It's always this crazy, insane push for time. I feel frantic every shift but I need my hours. And some repacks are worse than others. My coworker said he pushes 6 boxes an hour. At first I was shocked because I got spoken to for pushing more in that time. My coworker explained his area is a lot of small items, usually breakable, so it takes a while. Makes sense. I thought back to myself timing my repacks and noticed the trend. I own the repacks for ALLL of C&D block (though I only own bed/bath/rugs/decor pillows) and only because the other end of C&D for us doesn't have as much and would be stupid for the TM over there to sort through all our things to pick his out. But, sometimes I am full of small items in these repacks-- washclothes, soap pumps and the like, tons of bags of command brand hooks and strips, hearth and hand small kitchen things... On a bad day I can get almost 2 boxes full of these small and rather fragile items on a shipment of 20 repacks. And to kick me while I'm down, much of the soap pumps and hearth and hand are in small boxes that need opened. On my better days and a good average, I figured I can push 8 repacks in 40 minutes. My best time was a bunch of larger things in the boxes- 5 repacks in 20 minutes. That 8 repacks on a bad day with all these little things? Close to an hour- and I am told I'm too slow then. When repacks fall back on the team pushing the case stock, prepare for a lot more unfinished work. Repacks slow everyone down.

Of course, your TM's movement isn't always just them pushing out things. Yeah, even quickly helping a guest or two, you should be able to push 40 in an hour. But responding for backups takes time. Sometimes your TMs will get stuck up there for a while. I missed out on a whole half hour Saturday when it was all hands on deck. Carry outs take time. Going into the back to pull an item takes time. Many times a guest is needy and takes more time than expected. It happens, we all know, and we all know sometimes we get long situations- though they may be an exception, not a rule- each store and it's shopping demographic is different. And sometimes those exceptions at certain times becomes more prevalent.

I can't give any real advise but just telling you as a basic GM how it feels and what we see on our end of things. I see it's a headache for the leaders and they don't want to have to talk to anyone or coach or whatever. But one thing that has really helped us on the floor is communication. Since we are getting behind, our closing lead had to tell the front end to try to not call us as frequently the other day. It helped. Maybe getting service desk to stage vehicles with the go backs or get a cashier- if it slows enough- to start helping with go backs. Our leads have also jumped in with us for a short while to help push a vehicle, which is nice to work with a lead, talk and joke as you work and get that sense of team back all while working faster. It also helps morale. Our lead even admitted how hard modernization has been on them. I know that, but hearing it let's you know everyone is trying to figure it out and no one is pointing fingers.

It just sounds like this issue overall is company-wide. It's not a single-store challenge. But we will all persevere and figure it out together or Target will (hopefully) find the magic equation that we'll all use.
 
It's doable but depends on a lot of factors.

Are the vehicles properly sorted, so that the stuff from the same aisle goes together? Is the TM moving the vehicle as they go, working a whole aisle before moving to the next? Etc. All those pieces of best practice.

Secondly remember that besides the Holidays, we are coming into the two busiest weeks of the rest of the year, so burnout is normal and expected. I'm in one of the super freaky or whatever it's called for BTC and while we are getting big trucks, it's not as bad as before because we know exactly who is accountable for what. It does help.
 
If your vehicles aren’t sorted well you’re screwed. Good vehicles taking forever is a training issue. Bad vehicles suck.

Don't I know it. It's move-in week here and between the mass of guests that need hand-holding and zoning (a shit-show, everywhere looks awful due to move-in week people leaving their shit they don't want everywhere), AND the poorly sorted vehicle, I barely got half the damn thing done. Of course they also wanted reshop and auditing done too. In a 4 hour shift. Yeah, no, none of this is getting fully done (except the auditing)

We have so few people on the line now (and most of them new). Even when we had experienced TMs there were never enough--and good sorting goes out the window at my store when whoever's running the line keeps going "hurry it up" and "we gotta keep the line moving!" It's worse now.
 
No, the standard is crap. The standard is more or less someone's expectations of what they think should be done based on business constraints/demands.

Can they be met? Sure they can sparsely over 1500+ stores (just read through the threads). The law of averages comes into play at times, but mostly the "Blind Squirrel will eventually find a nut." would be the rule for the day.

Our truck process deals with too many inconsistencies to have such narrow time expectations. You don't think so? Then why do the vast majority of us struggle so badly? Then you add trying to do it when the store is open. That's like throwing a wrench in the gear works. Your time standard is shot.

Remember, this is a JOB, not an OLYMPIC SPORTING EVENT. Your not in competition with your personal goals or another Team Member to process freight. We are not compensated in such a manner.

Back in the day when we were scanning the trucks during the unload process, we never utilized any of the data. It was purged within three days of unload. As a company, I cannot tell you how incredibly STUPID that was not capturing all of that data and analyzing it for performance purposes.

Time is so valuable. We had actual REAL TIME data that could have been used to give statistically significant time yields. All of the seasonal variations, truck conditions, personnel problems, along with all of the other issues of the day could have been captured and measured for a fairly accurate time standards.

As for the repack process, way too inconsistent. Not weight, nor number of pieces, nor packaging is given consideration when determining the amount of time it takes to process one repack box. Then you have the guest. To establish realistic goals, it would take a considerable amount of time and data collection. That ship sailed a few years ago.
 
Was that the standard for pushing truck before the store opens? Definitely do-able although I agree with others about a well-sorted vehicle really helping a lot. The standard needs to be adjusted when the store opens. Makes a big difference when we have to work around and/or assist guests. But logic, you know. That's a rare bird these days.
 
As far as I was ever told/expected when I worked at the store level the standard was 60 seconds per box, so 60 per hour. So yeah I hear 40 and I think that's the dream right there. Especially consider how much easier it is to work vehicles now that time is being given up front to sort them better.
If you really want to know, not only do I think its doable I also think it's sort of funny that it's something to ever struggle with. But take that with a grain of salt because I was and am a giant overachiever and was surrounded by equally work oriented individuals (half the team were former Log TLs). No surprise we were on top for our group and district in everything from unload times to BRLA reports.
 
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