MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

Maeby said:
Good luck to everybody working fulfillment these next couple of weeks. If you're picking make sure to keep an eye on your cart when you're on the salesfloor. Guests will take items from the carts when they see them alone.
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Quote for truth.. I have taken to taking my hoodie and tossing it over the top if I have higher dollar or high demand items, cause the SFS carts are not as good as the triple tiers for hiding stuff in..
 
Antennae said:
We had a newbie try and slap a label on a pillow since it said SIOC and they thought that's how your pillow arrives.
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Doesn't it make you wonder why it states SIOC then? I mean someone somewhere assigned it that.

I've been told multiple times that it's not my job to think, it's my job to do. So you can't have it both ways. Either I follow what I'm told to do or not.

And you can say that obviously you can't ship a pillow like that, but obviously, we shouldn't be blocking the fire tunnels either product either. But here we are.
 
15 Sec. Remain said:
Question though. Is it odd when it took me to a backroom aisle location on the zebra, it asked for a multiple amount, but then needed only 1? What made it odd was that it was not in a Casepack location..
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The system may think you're OOS on the floor. Corp figures since you're already back there pulling 1 item for an order, you might as well save time/step and pull enough to fill the floor. So it'll tell you to pull 12, scan 2 for the order, and expects you to take the remaining 10 to the floor.

I personally think this is stupid. While it look reasonable on paper, Flex rarely has time to restock the shelves. At my store they were not allowed to put it with the rest of the pulls and they weren't allowed to put it in reshops. TMs would also throw a fit if they simply tried to hand it to the TM in that section. It got so bad I told my team to just backstock right away what they don't need. I didn't care if it messed up some backroom metric and the Logistics ETL got pissed. They needed to learn how to work as a team.
 
Bosch said:
Walk into 300 SFS orders and 120 OPU orders and there are two of us until 12 noon. The ones that came in at noon? Two brand newbies. That is what they scheduled for OPU and SFS the day before Black Thursday.. WTF??? My TL came in 9am and was pulled in five different directions and a threat that we would be shut down if we didn't finish. I picked and packed my ass off, start at 300 and left at 200 with two pallets and three sterilite boxes of bagged orders of just my handiwork. Five minutes before I left, can you stay another two hours. Umm dude 10hrs was enough. We are so fucked for tomorrow.
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We're fucked already.

Our team is scheduled too far apart to even get the primary portion picked. OPU is crazy busy (as usual for Q4), and theres one every 5 minutes. Half of our morning team is on OPU and theres hardly anyone to stay in SFS.
 
Irdasur said:
We're fucked already.

Our team is scheduled too far apart to even get the primary portion picked. OPU is crazy busy (as usual for Q4), and theres one every 5 minutes. Half of our morning team is on OPU and theres hardly anyone to stay in SFS.
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They stopped pulling SFS all together at my store cause four people couldn't keep up with OPU. They left me to finish packing what we had picked, I didn't finish it. It is more important to have the guest traffic in the store than the money from the SFS orders. :rolleyes: I am so mad right now I could spit. And first thing this morning, yep a brand newbie! At least he had a clue. I was so grateful for that. He asked questions and seemed to understand look for things even slow as a newbie was I could leave him alone for a while to pick my batches.

The fun part about all this? tomorrow I may have to try and find all those orders that are just sitting and with amount of door busters that I was picking I am going to cancel a lot of orders tomorrow..

I don't know if I will still be working for spot by the end of my shift tomorrow.. I am that angry..
 
unknown said:
Doesn't it make you wonder why it states SIOC then? I mean someone somewhere assigned it that.

I've been told multiple times that it's not my job to think, it's my job to do. So you can't have it both ways. Either I follow what I'm told to do or not.

And you can say that obviously you can't ship a pillow like that, but obviously, we shouldn't be blocking the fire tunnels either product either. But here we are.
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It says SIOC because the system is imperfect. The same reason it tells me to ship a dress in a 277 - if I lay it flat, that's what it would fit in - but obviously I'm going to fold it. I tell my team to look at the recommended box size, but use common sense. A pack of markers does not need a 280. A pair of shorts is not SIOC.
And for God's sake, YES, it's your job to think. Somebody has to!
 
essie said:
It says SIOC because the system is imperfect. The same reason it tells me to ship a dress in a 277 - if I lay it flat, that's what it would fit in - but obviously I'm going to fold it. I tell my team to look at the recommended box size, but use common sense. A pack of markers does not need a 280. A pair of shorts is not SIOC.
And for God's sake, YES, it's your job to think. Somebody has to!
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I just tell people the system is on crack with a meth chaser and use your brain to pack it right.. I get a laugh and the point is made for the most part.
 
I was in early for Grey Thursday. We're Low Volume, but still managed about 500 units by 2:30. We didn't have a great system in place and a lot of non-sfs people were scheduled earlier, before any of the regular SFS TMs were. It caused some hiccups. But somehow, with 200 orders at noon, we rounded up about 8-10 people to pick and squeezed it in at the last minute. Sadly, I heard that effort wasn't available for packing. So we missed that metric.

As for BF, I'm anticipating a lot of INF issues and just general guest dodging. I can only image how it's going tonight. I'm in early AM again to likely find a similar amount of orders and even more chaos to handicap it's success.

At least the backroom isn't wall to wall pallets and random debris everywhere... It's now in every aisle on the Salesfloor. 🤦🏻‍♂️
 
Rift said:
HQ logic: lets have them scan the same thing multiple times, that’ll improve pack speed.

Lol so now we gotta scan the cart (parent), scan the items, go back, scan the cart again (child), scan the items again, wait for the printer, scan the label, then actually pack. Oh but you think you’re done now? No you have to go back, scan the label again to “sort” it. Jesus i cant wait to that 1k+ times on black friday
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Reminds me of the good old days when SFS first started and you had to put a pick label on each item as you were picking, then scan each item into a hold location waco at the end of the batch. And when packing, after you went through the packing steps, you would have to go to the main menu and scan the shipping label again and then another label to "stage" it. All of this using myFA on the PDAs.

hufflepuff said:
What is this for?

View attachment 6531
JohnSith373 said:
It’s the roll holder for lithium, hazardous, gripper tape, etc.
It goes on the first shelf under the table.
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I see corporate stole my idea...
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taint3dhalo said:
Working on a resume, whats a good title if I do SFS?
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Be careful not to embellish it too much if your potential employer will be running a thorough background check. When I applied for my current job, I put my title at Target as "Order Fulfillment Team Member" and the background check company flagged it for manual review because Target reported it as "Fulfillment Team Member."

Bosch said:
Guessing newbie or lazy.. Our newbie kids don't get it, "Why amazon doesn't do it that way?" As calmly as I could explain, as I took his finished box and threw it across the rollers to the dock door, it hit the dock door and landed on the on concrete.. "That is what UPS/FED-Ex will do to the box, use the pillows so that what is in it will not break when it gets thrown. Point made?" Yes ma'am point made.. "Amazon picks and packs, but its UPS/FED-Ex and USPS you worry about."

I also will pull out boxes out of the pallets as we rearrange things and have them opened and fixed if I catch it.. Cause I shake boxes as I move them around to get more boxes on the pallets.. Bitchy move but it catches some stuff.
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Amazon also has a thousand different box sizes, with an accurate system that tells the packer the exact right size box to use.

Bosch said:
My favorite was a wood bench with a fabric pad, we had to build a box for it, nope the jackass stuck the collate on the bottom and sent it.. UPS driver refused it. Thank god.. Didn't even bubble wrap it or anything, would have been destroyed if it had gone out like that. We ended up in the office with HR over that one cause I had some very unkind words for who did that and he wanted an apology. He is still waiting for it and he no longer works SFS..
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IMG_0806.JPG
Bonus points if you can figure out what else is wrong with this besides no box.
 
^^Tear in upper right corner
Shipping label flipped wrong way around(we are told to fold it so it can't be read). I think your is correct.

And they didn't at least tape the damn thing closed.. :p

And Amazon ain't that great with some of the shit I have gotten in boxes.. A thumb drive in a box close to our 438? Yeah no.. T-shirts in bags big enough for me wrap a car in? They ain't perfect..
 
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Bosch said:
They stopped pulling SFS all together at my store cause four people couldn't keep up with OPU. They left me to finish packing what we had picked, I didn't finish it. It is more important to have the guest traffic in the store than the money from the SFS orders. :rolleyes: I am so mad right now I could spit. And first thing this morning, yep a brand newbie! At least he had a clue. I was so grateful for that. He asked questions and seemed to understand look for things even slow as a newbie was I could leave him alone for a while to pick my batches.

The fun part about all this? tomorrow I may have to try and find all those orders that are just sitting and with amount of door busters that I was picking I am going to cancel a lot of orders tomorrow..

I don't know if I will still be working for spot by the end of my shift tomorrow.. I am that angry..
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We had a stress test that "failed" and only gave us non-Q4 volume. It was a nice idea, but they didn't factor the Q4 OPU into the equation. The test was always a fail from the start. I've read that information they sent to my ETL-LOG. I don't remember the plan mentioning OPU at all. You can't really expect the good pickers to handle OPU and SFS.

Personally, I don't let Corporate's stupid decisions anger me. Whoever stole the 'Try to pick a batch in 30 minutes' from this site is missing the point. You can't really enforce that in OPU, and drop it on SFS. There is no leeway for the people on OPU, not anymore. The unpredictableness of OPU is a bother, and its consistently busy in Q4. I'm not surprised that my store's management didn't account for OPU's volume, after the stress test.

My STL tried to push the team, and I had to stop them with brutal honesty. Schedule us better, and you'll get results. If not, then it is not our problem. Even worse, our ETL-HR would "experiment" with our team's schedule in the past. To no surprise, we've missed deadlines multiple times.

"B-But we scheduled enough of you guys! You guys have more than enough hours!"

Uh, yeah. You split us up, when we work better together, and ignore literally every logical feedback I've thrown at you. Our previous management didn't schedule us terribly, and modernization is drowning our store. Newbies are scheduled to work by themselves without a veteran SFS TM around, and SPOT gave us extra packing scans steps in Pack'n'Ship 2.0 (No consecutive design to automatically move onto the next Subcart location without an extra scan). The 30 minute batch idea was thrown out the window, long ago.
 
Bosch said:
And Amazon ain't that great with some of the shit I have gotten in boxes.. A thumb drive in a box close to our 438? Yeah no.. T-shirts in bags big enough for me wrap a car in? They ain't perfect..
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I honestly don’t know if Amazon really is any better. I have a subscription to deliver the same item (a sparkling juice) every month, and every time it comes in one of three different box sizes, usually with no air pillows, sometimes bubble wrapped.
 
These new SFS carts are garbage on these busy days. Bring back the three tiers.

Also lol at STL constantly asking me every 30 minutes what I was doing when I pulled OPUs nonstop for 8 hours and we didn't finish them when I left.
 
We almost immediately ditched our SFS tubs in our storage trailer and started using shopping carts when we realized what a disaster area our SFS work stations were trying to use the tubs today.
 
Antennae said:
These new SFS carts are garbage on these busy days. Bring back the three tiers.

Also lol at STL constantly asking me every 30 minutes what I was doing when I pulled OPUs nonstop for 8 hours and we didn't finish them when I left.
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What I did.. When we found a couple that were not full of truck push or claimed by the OPU peeps..

But the leadership in my store just doesn't fucking get it.. They thought that three or four people could handle it all for SFS/OPU that the OPU people could help SFS when they didn't have anything to do.. Umm how about the 500 SFS orders you knew we were getting, and we told you, we told you District people told you that OPU volume was going to be large. So you schedule four people on Thursday two of them brand fucking new as in their first day!

The flow TL who was running the truck yesterday morning was also so thrilled that you scheduled everyone but the SFS OPU people under flow and then pulled over half his "inbound" people to do projects aka set the store up since there was almost no prep for yesterday. People told scramble and find the end caps product, detrash and get it out!!!!

It was a shit show..
 
Anyone know what causes the "Heat Sensor Bad" message on the airspeed machine? We've never had this problem before and now it just happened to the third one within a month.
 
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essie said:
It says SIOC because the system is imperfect. The same reason it tells me to ship a dress in a 277 - if I lay it flat, that's what it would fit in - but obviously I'm going to fold it. I tell my team to look at the recommended box size, but use common sense. A pack of markers does not need a 280. A pair of shorts is not SIOC.
And for God's sake, YES, it's your job to think. Somebody has to!
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essie said:
It says SIOC because the system is imperfect. The same reason it tells me to ship a dress in a 277 - if I lay it flat, that's what it would fit in - but obviously I'm going to fold it. I tell my team to look at the recommended box size, but use common sense. A pack of markers does not need a 280. A pair of shorts is not SIOC.
And for God's sake, YES, it's your job to think. Somebody has to!
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Oh I agree. But then I get some new abbreviation who makes more than me and says, "Trust the system." Or some other bullshit some desk sitter made up. So you get what you ask for. Don't hire someone, give them little to no training, treat them like shit, then expect them to go against what they've been told.
 
Bosch said:
What I did.. When we found a couple that were not full of truck push or claimed by the OPU peeps..

But the leadership in my store just doesn't fucking get it.. They thought that three or four people could handle it all for SFS/OPU that the OPU people could help SFS when they didn't have anything to do.. Umm how about the 500 SFS orders you knew we were getting, and we told you, we told you District people told you that OPU volume was going to be large. So you schedule four people on Thursday two of them brand fucking new as in their first day!

The flow TL who was running the truck yesterday morning was also so thrilled that you scheduled everyone but the SFS OPU people under flow and then pulled over half his "inbound" people to do projects aka set the store up since there was almost no prep for yesterday. People told scramble and find the end caps product, detrash and get it out!!!!

It was a shit show..
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Wow. Sorry you had to deal with that. We had extra people help us out all day. But our count was consistently at 2,000 items, it just wouldn’t go down. We had six pickers and four packers and we had to start using three tiers. We also got three people dedicated to OPU the whole night. There was a lot we had to INF that was already taken by guests. Our packers stayed late to finish up all the carts. Our UPS trailer was already half full when I left. I was done at midnight, I can’t imagine what the morning crew is walking into.
 
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In non black Friday mode I use the prep app to audit new TMs and teach TMs to do that for other people, "oh you brought a casepack, do you really need a casepack?" It's helpful for knowing what will be backstock before it gets prepped and given to a packer. But in Black Friday mode with new TMs I wish I didn't have to scan 20 shampoo individually when I find out it is actually needed.

Rift said:
Yo do you have the part number. I never got one with my refresh and i really need one
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The SAP numbers continue in sequence if you need to order 2X or 3X

Bosch said:
So you schedule four people on Thursday two of them brand fucking new as in their first day!
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At least your people showed up. We hired a bunch of people specifically to start the week of Thanksgiving as cashiers (with previous cashier experience) and SFS some of the SFS were to start the day of Thanksgiving as their first day (It's what corporate funding would allow, as it was we had to cut back core TMs to try to onboard and train early.) So many callouts and NCNS that I think we probably had a good 100 hours of scheduled people not show up between those work centers.
 
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