MEGATHREAD End to End team PILOT

At our store, we are currently doing a 3 person unload. The merch from the DC is coming to us the same way it always has (when we had a 10 or so person unload), so depending on the truck size, it has been taking us between 4 and 6 hours to unload. It has come to my attention that TM's are supposed to come in at the 2 hour mark to relieve the unloaders, but this is not always happening, with some folks being on the unload for the entire unload without a break. We have had unloads end right before the 6 hour mark and we have had throwers (which in this case is 1 TM throwing) in the truck for 4 hours straight with no break, and those on the line have gone up to just a few moments from compliance without one. There are also TM's scheduled for 5 hour shifts, that end up working over because the unload is not finished. What do you. all think about what the expectations should be concerning taking breaks during the unload when there is no TM to relieve? Should the unloaders just stop the unload at a certain point and take a 15 and then go back and continue, or what? No one on the unload seems to have gotten any kind of direction from superiors concerning this.

WTF! the minimum for a 1300 piece truck is 5 people. The times for truck offload havent changed. You need to contact your STL and DTL to get those people back.
 
I actually like the idea conceptually of going down to a small unload team in this way, but in practice it is difficult because expectations around the unload has to change for it to work well.

I guarantee that I could get some HS/college aged dudes to do this job if it was 5pm-9pm and that is all they had to do. Most retailers want it to be cartons/payroll hour spent. You really do not want to spend more than 12-15 hours of payroll on the unload itself though, as doing too much would defeat the purpose and mean you are increasing the total payroll being spent on the unload. So you are stuck at 3-4 shifts/trailer. 4 people at 4 hours a piece though wouldn't need to hurry too much and could stop and take their 15s before getting back to it.
We have 6 people who work 1 to 3 hours just unloading. Thats all they do is unload and go home.
 
Due to BTS, we are struggling in SL with E2E. I am nervous about 4th quarter now, especially since they are bound and determined to do this on the cheap payroll wise.
Just remember during black friday that its cold because you standing on Judas upside down in the ice because you are at the bottom level of hell itself.
 
interesting.
  1. You have that much cosmetics that you need that space?
  2. You don't farm out your cleaning crew?
  3. Where are the waxer and buffer and its stuff going, if you don't mind me asking?
I like the idea, I just dont think it will fly. Right before the change to bulleye's playground, our ETL-SF decided with STL permission to end one spot. The whole area was reset to be a grocery area so people go get grab and goes. It looked beautiful and nice for three weeks it was up. Then GVP came in and threw a fit about it. Yes, DTL knew (old one now since transfered away). Yes DTL had no problem. No we don't have dollar spot items in back, they were clearanced out.

He WAS NOT HAPPY! So it was put back to Dollar sopt on the next truck day that so happen to be a 2500 piece truck because all the dollar spot that was supposed to be there came back again.

So good luck with your use of the closet. Hope you make it further than we did. (we have a hijaacked grocery shelf that is nothing but wacos that have brands on them marked 'Fast movers: do not backstock put here'

I don't think it's necessary, probably the delicate flower they hired for cosmetics is afraid of the backroom.

It's not the cleaners area out back, that's massive. It's not the cleaning closet up front, that's got a mop sink. This is a tiny closet we used to keep fff stuff and the giftcard tub and register supplies in. Then we added metro racks for checklane candy, now its more racks and just cosmetics.

We'll see how long it lasts.
 
No it really needs people familiar w unload and able to use the equipment safely.
Maybe there would be problems at stores who aren't used to receiving daily FDC deliveries, but they will figure it out.

Every keyholder at my store knows how to receive the FDC truck now. Palletized RDC loads would be handled in a similar way.

And even if somehow nobody knows how to unload a trailer, the driver can show the LOD how to fill out the paperwork and tell them what pallets to take. I can't see it taking more than an hour in a worst-case scenario, which is hardly a noticeable delay when delivery times are estimates only. The truck is more likely to be stuck in traffic than stuck at a store where nobody will unload it.
 
3 person unload in 4-6 hours I'd love to be the thrower because that's beyond slow for me, I've thrown 2200 piece trucks by myself in 90 mins. 4+ hours that's barely moving for the thrower. ofc the 2 on the line are probably moving as quick as they can because they likely didn't re-do the line to account for much less people, so they're being asked to run up and down the line like crazy. The amount of consolidation of the line is going to depend on how it's being worked out during the day. Touches and Steps that's what wastes time. If you're wasting a ton of time on steps sorting on the line they better not be wasting more time touching and moving the boxes around later in the day.
 
That's hilarious jb. Our light duty stockroom is packed. I spent the last two days cleaning bulk. Piled up about 70 empty pallets. Yet 4 people couldn't make a dent in light duty. Shrug.
 
There is 44 vehicles of backstock in the backroom since they cut our hours lmao. Some of us are down to 10. ETLs are panicing from having to do the flexes. There's 4 audits in the gun and 20 auto fill left right now even know flow came in 5 hours ago

Hahaha

Yes, this is part of the issue that Target might not realize. The number being preached is the "20% of a trailer goes to backstock" and this is in reference to the actual truck backstock. They are only partially calculating backroom workload because I would argue that many SKUs are touched twice on the current system. Even if the SKU flags as push, a large portion of those cases only partially go out and then go to the backroom. The amount of these "guest facing" end to end areas are not actually spending their time on the floor due to the inefficiency of our processes, or backstock piles up.
 
Yes, this is part of the issue that Target might not realize. The number being preached is the "20% of a trailer goes to backstock" and this is in reference to the actual truck backstock. They are only partially calculating backroom workload because I would argue that many SKUs are touched twice on the current system. Even if the SKU flags as push, a large portion of those cases only partially go out and then go to the backroom. The amount of these "guest facing" end to end areas are not actually spending their time on the floor due to the inefficiency of our processes, or backstock piles up.
And that's not even the total mess

We have 2 days worth of research in the gun, we keep getting an extra truck a week

I wonder how long ETLs are willing to play catch up on Sunday before backroom gets their hours back. We keep having to call random in and they give shitty salesfloor tms crash courses on backstock so they fuck everything up

I'm all for a junky Backroom but only if I have the hours to actually get something done. I came in today later than my normal time because they cut hours and there were 21 flexes late in the gun because the lods forgot they pretty much cut the dayside opening shift and were too slow to finished the flexes in a timely manner
 
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I mean, I'm not too annoyed my hours where massively cut to give to sale floors but I'm annoyed that those same hours are being to pull salesfloor from the floor to do shoddy work in the back when we play catch-up

Have of their shifts are just helping market recover or doing some other dumb task
 
My store: Market and Cosmetics is now full e2e with softlines being partial. O/N workflow so we have one o/n person break out SL and push a small bit, stage the rest for push. Complete and utter mess. Market: TL is gone (term'd) all original TMs = gone. Saw a sales floor ETL pull a pallet of bananas out onto the floor and stick a sales sign on it. STL came in about that time and flipped their sh*t. Pallet was moved back immediately to the Ambi room. Now it's a lovely stack of vino. (I could go for a glass of Pino Grigio about now)

We have three Market TMs now and all three are requesting to move to another work center (A-volume store/small Market/PFresh). PFresh shelves are bare. Half pallets of produce sitting in the cooler with molding fruit because there is no one pushing it. 23 cases of uncapped, still wrapped in plastic bananas QMOS'd a few days back: no bananas on the floor - they were all in the Ambi room. You walk into the Ambi room and it smells of vegetable decomp to the point you grimace. SteriTech anyone? Received a ginormous (overnight) C&S last week and as it was a super small GM truck and we had plenty of TMs avail they decided to have us help out the Market team with culling/pushing/backstocking/LoPro'ing the coolers and freezer. By 6am PFresh looked awesome: full of product, beautifully zoned, missing sales price tags reprinted and hung ... nice and squeaky clean. Same ETL as above came in at 6:30am then hit the roof and argued with the loggy ETL in front of the entire o/n team for "overstepping" into her work center even though she only had one Market TM coming in at 7am. Wow. Just ........ wow.

Cosmetics: moved all COSM to an upstairs (multi-floor property) closet in the beauty section. HBNA is still downstairs in the regular backroom. Now ... when pulling manuals and autofills a good portion of HNBA shows up in the other location because the beauty team was never trained how to read a fill group. They just grab whatever and shove it in a waco. Now they're complaining because they've completely run out of room for backstock and have on average 1 - 2 three-tiers full of unlocated backstock sitting in their little closet.

SL: still pulling autos and manuals for them. Typically hitting about 15-20 M-Deletes per pull due to SL TMs coming down looking for such and such then simply grabbing it from the waco. Multiple size of the same STO'd as one DPCI ... list goes on and on and on and on ....

YaY e2e!
 
My store: Market and Cosmetics is now full e2e with softlines being partial. O/N workflow so we have one o/n person break out SL and push a small bit, stage the rest for push. Complete and utter mess. Market: TL is gone (term'd) all original TMs = gone. Saw a sales floor ETL pull a pallet of bananas out onto the floor and stick a sales sign on it. STL came in about that time and flipped their sh*t. Pallet was moved back immediately to the Ambi room. Now it's a lovely stack of vino. (I could go for a glass of Pino Grigio about now)

We have three Market TMs now and all three are requesting to move to another work center (A-volume store/small Market/PFresh). PFresh shelves are bare. Half pallets of produce sitting in the cooler with molding fruit because there is no one pushing it. 23 cases of uncapped, still wrapped in plastic bananas QMOS'd a few days back: no bananas on the floor - they were all in the Ambi room. You walk into the Ambi room and it smells of vegetable decomp to the point you grimace. SteriTech anyone? Received a ginormous (overnight) C&S last week and as it was a super small GM truck and we had plenty of TMs avail they decided to have us help out the Market team with culling/pushing/backstocking/LoPro'ing the coolers and freezer. By 6am PFresh looked awesome: full of product, beautifully zoned, missing sales price tags reprinted and hung ... nice and squeaky clean. Same ETL as above came in at 6:30am then hit the roof and argued with the loggy ETL in front of the entire o/n team for "overstepping" into her work center even though she only had one Market TM coming in at 7am. Wow. Just ........ wow.

Cosmetics: moved all COSM to an upstairs (multi-floor property) closet in the beauty section. HBNA is still downstairs in the regular backroom. Now ... when pulling manuals and autofills a good portion of HNBA shows up in the other location because the beauty team was never trained how to read a fill group. They just grab whatever and shove it in a waco. Now they're complaining because they've completely run out of room for backstock and have on average 1 - 2 three-tiers full of unlocated backstock sitting in their little closet.

SL: still pulling autos and manuals for them. Typically hitting about 15-20 M-Deletes per pull due to SL TMs coming down looking for such and such then simply grabbing it from the waco. Multiple size of the same STO'd as one DPCI ... list goes on and on and on and on ....

YaY e2e!
Sounds a lot like what I've seen so far too. We don't have any E2E in market/grocery yet though. But the SL and COSM are spot on. The o/n backroom still does pulls for COSM and some SL...and backstocks SLs. Wasn't the whole point of E2E for sections to own their own sections? Why do we still backstock SL's crap? Because they know they wouldn't do it correctly and they don't have time (to do it or train for it)... SL is still broken down overnight instead of at 4 or 6 because, again, they know they won't get done. Hell, they weren't even done breaking down at 8am last night and they started at 10pm! One person for a double truck and a TON of repacks and the girl there knows what she's doing and does it somewhat fast.

Anyway, I'm rambling. tl;dr - it's a shitshow.
 
So my store is ULV and doing 100% E2E for 3 weeks. We have our sign person but our price change, POG, instocks, gone. Soft lines, electronics, & MMB are working perfect! In electronics we research any time we can & our truck products are what we are researching & we don't have a lot extra. Backroom stock super light. Now nowhere else in the store is doing good. We are a Skelton crew already & with everyone on vacation and call offs it's a struggle. They still kept one person on one shift for backroom to do FA's & misc. other things. We have so much b/s ALL our vehicles are full & we are now using shopping carts.
Toy transition has been hell. Since no POG team & horrible toy TM they 1 to 2 people a day to do an aisle. So they empty aisle & set & that's it. None of the batchs have been pulled. CAFS are not big b/c items are staged in transition or in a vehicle.
 
Even with the DC's going to a more custom block shipping model, nothing is going to change until hours are allocated correctly and staffing matches the E2E requirements.

This is going to require a different scheduling discipline. Spot is just going to have to come to the realization that it will require "x" amount of hours and team members per department whether sales are there or not.

It is all to apparent that Spot has no idea how long or how many team members it really takes to process incoming merchandise. That's what happens when you do not take the time to legitimately measure what you do. This is very bad sign going forward.

Also, time has run out to hire and train team members for the 4th quarter given the current attrition rates and process changes. It's going to get a lot more difficult going forward. If you think BTS is awful, wait until all that fall/winter seasonal merchandise and Black Friday starts arriving.
 
According to an email I just received this morning, the end-to end pilot has been terminated, and all traditional teams are to be restored A.S.A.P.
 
I've been around since 2005. I used to post on the old breakroom. I just never got around to setting up a new account when breakroom was reestablished some years ago. My STL confirmed the cancellation of E2E earlier today. It was a miserable failure in my store and ruined morale. We had some 62 price change batches never pulled during the pilot, with millions of dollars lost to merchandise that went salvage without ever seeing the light of day.
 
In my humble opinion, our current CEO will not survive another year. His agenda is contrary to running a profitable business. Make sure you dump any company stock if you have any left in your 401k. When I am not working as a team leader I am a serious investor with my finger on the pulse of Wall Street. I own many different stocks from common shares to master limited partnerships to Real Estate Investment Trusts. What I do not own is any retail stocks since I am not in the game to lose money. The word on the street is that our beloved company is bleeding cash all over Wall St.; on a trajectory which unless corrected will lead to disaster. Don't take my word for it - do your homework.
 
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