A forecast for 750ish units with about 6 people everyday isn’t enough payroll for my store to pick everything. I don’t know how you guys did it with soo many units. We’re drowning in rolling units from the previous days.
Check the actual units received, or get the LOD to add SFS to their closing email. I'm willing to bet you're over forcast and you have 3 options, get store support to get on track, get someone in for the current day or next day, or manage through INF. We had a lot more units than normal drop in late in the evening this past week. I'm guessing that with the 4th in the middle of the week more people took the entire week of so we were mimicking a Sunday Monday flow pattern all this week.
Yeah I’m sure I could finish really quickly if I INF half a batch and throw an item in a box with 2 air bags.
Oh and another quick question I guess, does anyone ever actually have the correct amount of forecasted hours scheduled for SFS? I saw on July 4th we were forecasted 24 hours and only got 8. A team member and I both working half shifts.
We're a store that is consistently over forecast. I schedule to the forecast, if you know how long things are going to take to pick a batch with no errors and with things properly located then time every cart based on that and yes manage not being scheduled properly through INF. I'd rather people get the low hanging fruit first than blow payroll because we found everything. It's literally a 180 from the ETL before me. They focused on finding everything even when the store was a disaster area. TMs spent 80 min looking for a $5 softlines item. Now people know spend the time if they have it on the unlocated iPad and if they can't find it partner with AP not the inexpensive items. Don't poorly pack things as there's another metric you might not even know about that is based on complaints or returns from receiving items damaged. Usually for us it's multiple items with not enough pillows.
I hated it when they asked me at 7am if I would need help to get it done on time. Gee, let me get out my crystal ball and see what’s in these batches, how long it will take to pick them, and how many more will drop in by 1pm.
Check the sales, assume average times, work from there. The forecast is a pretty good indicator plus or minus 3 hours. If we start the day heavy it's not likely to get better so if we're at 40% to forecast by 7AM we're going to need help, we had a callout we're going to need help or to call someone in the next day early. The other option is managing volume through INF, not my preferred option, but it's what needs to be done sometimes. It's not complicated to figure out and leaders should know it, literally nothing Target does is at its core is complicated. It's just important that all parts work together.
We have to call out the new orders at my store. We have a few flex TMs that just completely suck at their job and the ETL overseeing them refuses to fire them. 1 TM never remembers to turn on her alerts and just checks the system when she remembers. She also can never remember how to use the equipment properly and claims its broken. I told her to prove it once she just stared at me. Then I asked to to try re-connecting so that I could see what the problem was. Again, just stared at me and then asked how. ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I could go on but I might give myself away.
We have one ETL that will call out orders but they also know we've had connectivity issues in the network and a couple MyDevices that don't have sounds for alerts, they have sound for picking just not alerts IDK but it's a thing. At least they are trying. I set a timer for 15 min and only call it if it's still there then.
What do you guys think is a reasonable amount of time to pack one box/order on average?
Packing is literally the one thing we teach everyone in the store to do because SFS becomes hell during 4th quarter, and its the easiest task to pick up on.
These values are based on my experience on Pack1.0, I haven't timed anything for Pack2.0 but was told it adds 30-45 seconds a box.
Brand new people should average at least a rate of 7-8 per hour. After a little practice it should be up to 15-18 per hour. Experienced people should be at 20-25 per hour, if you're at or above 25 per hour that rate of speed isn't going to last for more than 1.5-2 hours.
If you have multiple new young people at the pack stations I'm willing to bet they are talking to each other. All of our younger first job people will stop packing when they talk, or they will hold onto something and turn to the person they are talking to.
It's a generalization, but the women at my store can talk and keep the pace up where the men can't so I let whoever wants music play what they want as long as it's family friendly. If they want headphones they can have it in one ear. When I pick the music I just put on a Pandora pop workout station, they are usually songs above 120 beats per minute.
I hate the phrase sense of urgency, it's dumb business speak that people don't understand. It's not a sense of urgency it's a core competency you were hired to do, they are being complacent because eh "what's going to happen if I'm 'doing' my job" and the opposite is being concerned about a deadline, not a feeling of urgency. If you can't do your job in the time given, based on reasonable expectations then either you're getting written up or not making it past your 90 days. Sense of urgency should be saved for scrambling to prepare for a visit, it should not be an every day feeling or you're going to burn people out. Save the mindless MBA speak for that those classes don't try to use it on team members.
