MEGATHREAD End to End team PILOT

[Logo]

My biggest concern is if this is able to scale within our current processes. While its probably fine on a store taking 3-5 trailers/week right now, its going to be difficult to handle during large pushes. If you are doing a true grocery operating model, softlines end to end and any further rollouts for freight during the day you are going to have the line PACKED with freight at 8AM if you don't want it staged all over the floor.

I know what you mean. I'm so use to having a clean backroom. Yesterday we had a call out and a ns/nc so the backroom was jacked! I thought I was going to have a melt down!! I'll do my best to ensure our CTL has good backstocking routines! Lol I can't function when it's a hot mess!!!

 

[speedy]

I do understand what our exec's are saying about the handling of product more than once, but when we breakout/detrash, our merch is very neatly placed in carts by area, brand and style. Our Zs are by area. For a 6am start, our goal, including completely stocking/ finishing baby hardlines is 9am, and we do consistently hit or exceed that goal with 4-5 people. We are consistently finished with our part of the store before the 5 hours, and we go to the hardlines side, food truck or both and help.

My point is, that if softlines flow breaks out the same way, and the carts are placed in the departments as we do it now, ANYONE can stock it. It may be a little time consuming than what they THINK it should be, but it's only time consuming on the front end (breakout), and very quick on the back end of it (stocking).

Some above me (TL, ETL) that don't know what we do say it's VERY inefficient because we touch items in the black boxes twice, and we have to sort the green boxes into boxes/carts before we can even put them on a Z or in a cart. I totally get that.

And I'm just going to say that while I'm here, that the green repacks SUCK. They are almost all double marked with 16 and something else and half the time we have items from all areas in the boxes. If I can say that anything about the flow process is inefficient, it how the green boxes are handled by the initial DC before we get them. They are very time consuming and a general pain in the butt. No one gave us instructions of how to work the green boxes, so what we do right now, is that all boxes with hanging and some sort of folding or accessories are detrashed/sorted first and sent to where the Z's are set up to be placed. We do it on the folding side, so we keep ours and place them.

I am definitely willing to try their method, but I really don't believe our breakout process as inefficient as they think it is. If we breakout the same way, and we're done by 9 with it, if I come in at say, 7, that still leaves me and my teammates 6 hours to stock, pull, backstock, do research, zone, and do whatever else they need us to do on truck days.

 

[speedy]

What type of boxes are on the vehicle (repacks, assortmant cases? ) Are they sorted by department first, or you just grab a couple cases or repacks and go?

From the info I got today, they want us to separate the casepacks and send them out separately. It has not necessarily been discussed, but I'm thinking they want us to bring out by repack #, so a vehicle will have all #10's or all #15's etc, with the exception of the double/triple marked green repacks, which I guess we would sort on vehicles by say whether it is hanging (#16) with another number, or say 2 types we consider folding, like maybe #13/#15.

I see the green repacks as being the biggest issue here, because they mostly have hanging (16) and something else that will not go on a Z rack. Plus, the #16's can be from ANY department all mixed in, so you'd literally have to take some of the green boxes to at minimum of 2 areas and possible all areas before you can finish the entire vehicle.

 

[speedy]

For softlines, we were told, but have not started yet, that we will be breaking out and detrashing the same way, but then bringing everything to the back where it will be staged for people to work out for the rest of the day.

I hope my ETL and TL read this. I think that we should do it exactly the way you will be. It just makes sense to me. Why fix something that isn't broken?

 

[Doglover89]

Can anyone share how their store is scheduling SL for this? Typically we have an opener til 3 or 4 then 4 staggered closers coming in at anytime between 3 and 6:30pm. Mids on the weekends. Next week when we start this thing I have the most random shifts I've ever seen. 1pm to 8pm? Almost all of the other tms have the same shifts they've always had. So confused.

 

[speedy]

They told us today that there will be 2 basic 8 hour shifts, with mornings being either 7am-3:30pm or 9am-5:30pm, with the afternoon shift being from 2:00pm-10:30pm.

None of us are currently on the unload team, but if any of us are needed, we'd then go in at 6am I suppose. I am asked to do that sometimes but I'm never actually scheduled for it. Right now, our hardlines will stay as-is, so I'm guessing that hardlines TM's will generally be handling the unload

 

[Redzee]

That's not even end-to-end. We've been doing that for around 6 months and it sucks. It takes more softlines TMs to do in 8 hours what the flow softlines TMs used to do in 5.

Damn straight.

 

[SFSFun]

Please oh please don't think that all the work will get done the same day in a reasonable amount of time. Y'All know that there will be racks of softlines jammed up in the Backroom come the next morning, with not word communicated to anyone. Just bam!! straight to the face to the 4am(or when ever the process starts at y'ind store) people when they get in.

That is exactly what happened at our store the first few weeks. The backroom team was howling with laughter when we were told why the line was filled with z-racks at 9am. Now they just stage the racks on the sales floor in the departments, and whatever finished they push to the backroom at closing.

Right now the softlines breakout is done almost entirely with shopping carts because we don't have empty z-racks available.

 

[Logo]

Those of you already handling SL are handling their own pricing yet? How's that going?

 

[Yetive]

They are not at my store, but 2 of the 3 price change tms are sl flow, so they kind of are .

 

[PlanoBitch]

This is a typical truck day in SL and how we are scheduled:

We have 2 flow tms come in at 530am but they are scheduled under SL. They set up their break out area and then 1 goes off and pulls manuals for all of SL while the other one starts to break out. She separates the repacks off the pallet to one side of the aisle is folded/basics and the other side of the aisle is hanging repacks. She then starts to separate out the folded repacks into empty repacks on tubs. She has 1 tub for men's/women's. 1 tub for kids, 1 tub for infant hl, and 1 flat for shoes and accessories. When the other SL tm finishes the manuals she starts breaking out the hanging. When they finish breaking out they bring everything to the back so it's only 1 vehicle on the floor per person. The 2 flow tm girls then push all the repack tubs. Our auto fills drop at 9am so then my puller will go back and pull those.

We have 1 8am tm for SL come in to do pricing. On Monday's it is our SL brand tm who is in charge of kids so she is doing her own markdowns. The other days of the week it is a tm who knows pricing. We also have a closer on Monday's who does the rtw pricing for Tuesday from 5-10.

I come in at 8am and help break out with the girls until about 9-9:30 when we finish. I then break off from them and do SL workload.

Our next tm comes in at 10am to do racks. She is really good and is able to push all racks and then help with anything else. She is scheduled an 8 hr shift.

Our SL tl works 10-630 as well but she does basically whatever is needed on SL.

We have a 2-7 tm come in and she starts the back stock as soon as she comes in.

We then have 2 closers 5-10:15.

We have an opening and closing fitting room tm. The opener is normally able to keep up with all abandons- process and push so we don't have to touch those most days. Weekends are the execption. If she gets to busy then we all stop what we are doing and go back and blitz them out.

 

[graffiti]

Can anyone share how their store is scheduling SL for this?

We've been having one breakout tm scheduled 4am to 11-12:30, a second tm from 8am to 4-4:30, and two more come in 9a-2p and 10a-3p. Our DTL wants almost everything done dayside, so we can't blitz the breakout like we used to. On light days (4-6 pallets) it works swimmingly, but on heavy days (9-12+) it's an absolute nightmare. We've literally had freight roll over for weeks on end (up to 16 pallets and probably 15 racks and 25 carts already on the morning of another truck) during one of our heavy months before the DTL got involved with getting us help to catch up. A big issue is that we end up having to choose between continuing the breakout or starting the push, neither of which the LOG team will help out with anymore because everyone is in "protecting their hours" mode at this point, basically. (Teamwork!!) They're finally starting to try some new ideas for us, but our SL freight has been light again for a couple weeks so it'll take time to really be able to test it.

And backstock is another nightmare for us, because our leadership has the worst communication skills ever and keeps passing responsibility back and forth from the SL TMs to giving those hours to LOG to take care of. Only that never seems to be told to the TMs so one side gets told to stop backstocking and no one gets told to start again and suddenly there's a week of backstock hidden in the BR.

It's definitely been a rough beginning to this whole process for us, lol. And we haven't even added pricing or pog to our workload, so that'll be a new adventure.

All I can say is I hope everyone else's stores are aware of your store's particular constraints (wrt space for offstage work/staging, hours, availabilities, DTL expectations, SL volume + trucks per week + whether you have non-truck days available to play catch-up if needed + anyone who'll come in to work those days...) Basically, someone who actually knows your store's individual SL process involved in the decisions!

 

[PlanoBitch]

So far the pricing piece on the SL side is going much better then the HL side. I got lucky and both pricing tms and myself went to SL. Plus one of our SL brand tm knows pricing and another SL tm used to be a pog/pc tm so we are pretty solid on that.

 

[PlanoBitch]

We've been having one breakout tm scheduled 4am to 11-12:30, a second tm from 8am to 4-4:30, and two more come in 9a-2p and 10a-3p. Our DTL wants almost everything done dayside, so we can't blitz the breakout like we used to. On light days (4-6 pallets) it works swimmingly, but on heavy days (9-12+) it's an absolute nightmare. We've literally had freight roll over for weeks on end (up to 16 pallets and probably 15 racks and 25 carts already on the morning of another truck) during one of our heavy months before the DTL got involved with getting us help to catch up. A big issue is that we end up having to choose between continuing the breakout or starting the push, neither of which the LOG team will help out with anymore because everyone is in "protecting their hours" mode at this point, basically. (Teamwork!!) They're finally starting to try some new ideas for us, but our SL freight has been light again for a couple weeks so it'll take time to really be able to test it.

And backstock is another nightmare for us, because our leadership has the worst communication skills ever and keeps passing responsibility back and forth from the SL TMs to giving those hours to LOG to take care of. Only that never seems to be told to the TMs so one side gets told to stop backstocking and no one gets told to start again and suddenly there's a week of backstock hidden in the BR.

It's definitely been a rough beginning to this whole process for us, lol. And we haven't even added pricing or pog to our workload, so that'll be a new adventure.

All I can say is I hope everyone else's stores are aware of your store's particular constraints (wrt space for offstage work/staging, hours, availabilities, DTL expectations, SL volume + trucks per week + whether you have non-truck days available to play catch-up if needed + anyone who'll come in to work those days...) Basically, someone who actually knows your store's individual SL process involved in the decisions!

My dtl wants the push peice moved to dayside but we are still allowed to breakout in the morning. Thank god he is allowing us to decide what to do when as long as it is working and we still have most of our tms dayside.

 

[Doglover89]

It's definitely been a rough beginning to this whole process for us, lol. And we haven't even added pricing or pog to our workload, so that'll be a new adventure.

My ETL says that we are not adding pricing & pog to the SL workload? Those teams are remaining separate.

Thanks everybody for the input on how your stores schedule. I don't see how we'd be able to do that at my store. The vast majority of our tms are only available nights and weekends or only a few days a week. We simply won't have enough people to work weekday mornings.

 

[SrTLall]

My ETL says that we are not adding pricing & pog to the SL workload? Those teams are remaining separate.

Thanks everybody for the input on how your stores schedule. I don't see how we'd be able to do that at my store. The vast majority of our tms are only available nights and weekends or only a few days a week. We simply won't have enough people to work weekday mornings.

Queue the mass hiring.

 

[Redzee]

Reviewing my posts I realize I've been pretty disparaging. If we get the chance we may be able to improve things for ourselves and Spot. It's going to be an interesting summer. Sorry to be so negative.

 

[qmosqueen]

It's going to be an interesting summer.

VACATION time... a lot of TMs will be on vacation .... yeah fewer TMs to push

 

[Rock Lobster]

My ETL says that we are not adding pricing & pog to the SL workload? Those teams are remaining separate.

Thanks everybody for the input on how your stores schedule. I don't see how we'd be able to do that at my store. The vast majority of our tms are only available nights and weekends or only a few days a week. We simply won't have enough people to work weekday mornings.

Yes, it will be a change. I believe this is why they have been doing these things in phases. Grocery Operating Model came out first and now Softlines End to End. Its strategic to split the rollouts up over the course of a year or two so that stores can begin changing their hiring needs. I think most stores are used to keeping the entire salesfloor pretty light (our TLs take up almost all the hours for each workcenter), and now the payroll is shifting to them.

 

[Meli4Target]

So my ETL who is over softlines told my peer & I that softlines will start being in charge of their price change. from what my ETL said the price change hours will go into softlines and we can utilize pricing team members or our brand team members to ensure the markdowns are complete. any other stores doing this? dont know if this is a step into the end to end direction, but it sure seems like it.

 

[Ahem]

Sounds like different stores have interpreted this thing in different ways. My store, the flow team comes in at 4 like usual under logistics, then around 6 they're softlines/tyle tms. They open all the boxes put the hanging on racks, then they also take the reshop that pm softlines tms didn't finish and sort that in with their racks. They no longer push shoes or swimwear at all. We have vmtms who do that. They don't push accessories either. I (recently forced into being sm FR tm) now push that. Whatever they don't finish, am/mid sl tms finish. Then for the most part the mid and closers in SL just zone, fold, clean the floor and finger space. They want them to reshop too, but they have so little time. Almost all of them have day jobs so they're only working 4 hour shifts

All the push is being finished. The store looks pretty great... But the sl flow team and FRO's workload is bigger now and everyone is angry. Flow team wants us doing more sorting than we typically do, we have to be more guest-focused (I'm supposed to be chatting them up, walking to rooms, getting sizes, etc etc), but we also have to maintain accessories, and still keep up with the phones and sorting. And flow is annoyed because they're doing their regular work plus the work that was formerly regulated to sl tms.

On slow days, this thing works beautifully. On the busy days, no one finishes anything and it makes the next person's job harder.

Oh and we get a truck everyday unless there's snow or they cancelled it for some other reason.

 

[POG997]

They're clearly playing with how this is going to work. I have a friend that works one state over who's in a completely different group, and whose district is going about it completely differently than mine is.

I would imagine they're throwing a lot of different ideas around and seeing what works. If this goes forward I have a feeling the end result probably won't look exactly like what any of us are doing and will instead be some hybrid of the various things that did work for all of the different pilot schemes.

 

[Yev]

My store switched from 4am to 6am unload and SL end to end at the same time. We used to have 5 people working SL flow at 4am and now we have 2, sometimes 3. All of my suggestions and pleas for help before the change were ignored. Only a few weeks into the 6am unload after multiple flow tms have walked out (I told the Flow TL that I would be next) did the STL apologize to me (uhhhh ok). So far my only good days are when the SL ETL, SL TL, or VMTL aren't in the building to stress me out over delivering the impossible: SL hanging broken out by 8am by myself. They gave me a new person to train and it still takes until after 10am to finish putting everything onto Z racks for SL to push. I'm pretty excited for when we start getting >250 repacks on at least 3 out of 5 trucks per week instead of high 100s to low 200s w/ 4 trucks a week. I've enjoyed SL flow for years because there was no pressure, micromanagement, and I could succeed at the job and get recognized for it. But hey the SL zone looks great (never did) because they are actually making SL do it now that they have to push the truck.

 

[BigEyedPhish]

My store switched from 4am to 6am unload and SL end to end at the same time. We used to have 5 people working SL flow at 4am and now we have 2, sometimes 3. All of my suggestions and pleas for help before the change were ignored. Only a few weeks into the 6am unload after multiple flow tms have walked out (I told the Flow TL that I would be next) did the STL apologize to me (uhhhh ok). So far my only good days are when the SL ETL, SL TL, or VMTL aren't in the building to stress me out over delivering the impossible: SL hanging broken out by 8am by myself. They gave me a new person to train and it still takes until after 10am to finish putting everything onto Z racks for SL to push. I'm pretty excited for when we start getting >250 repacks on at least 3 out of 5 trucks per week instead of high 100s to low 200s w/ 4 trucks a week. I've enjoyed SL flow for years because there was no pressure, micromanagement, and I could succeed at the job and get recognized for it. But hey the SL zone looks great (never did) because they are actually making SL do it now that they have to push the truck.

Judging from the looks of things just wait till you have to set your own POGs/Transitions too

 

[semantics]

There will also be more stock zones added very soon, so repacks themselves will be sorted better box to box, and then sorted within the box apparently.

That alone makes a world of difference it's really easy to train people to work out boxes quickly but with high turnover stores getting large repack trucks done is a terrible feat to accomplish.