MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[SFSFun]

I'd assume if no items with the freezer fill group are located in the back, batches won't be generated.

Yeah but if a store DOESN'T get rid of the freezer locations, they will have batches in there, and it seems like it would be hard to do while wearing gloves and using a touchscreen.

We're doing it now. I haven't heard any complains or issues from the market team.

We don't have Move yet, but the market team complains enough about having to do the SDA. Maybe they just need different gloves or something to make it work.

 

[Lazy]

Yeah but if a store DOESN'T get rid of the freezer locations, they will have batches in there, and it seems like it would be hard to do while wearing gloves and using a touchscreen.


We don't have Move yet, but the market team complains enough about having to do the SDA. Maybe they just need different gloves or something to make it work.

When pulling with move they don't have to hit the screen as much. Just hit one button. So we haven't noticed to big of difference over the pdas

 

[Leonhart621]

Back to SFS, we're getting another pack station. We only end around 40 or less orders because there are 2 other Targets 7 miles from our store who started SFS last year. Obviously we're still better than the other stores so they're upping our orders.

 

[Lazy]

Back to SFS, we're getting another pack station. We only end around 40 or less orders because there are 2 other Targets 7 miles from our store who started SFS last year. Obviously we're still better than the other stores so they're upping our orders.

We could use another station. We could make another one since we have an extra WAT machine.. But we really could do with another bubble machine

 

[SFSFun]

Back to SFS, we're getting another pack station. We only end around 40 or less orders because there are 2 other Targets 7 miles from our store who started SFS last year. Obviously we're still better than the other stores so they're upping our orders.

Are they giving you a full extra packing station (same large metal desk with shelving) or a smaller one made of wire shelves? And do you get another air pillow machine?

I'm not really sure what goes into deciding how many orders a store gets, but I can safely say that having other SFS locations nearby does not impact it in any meaningful way. We have a bunch of SFS (including ESFS) nearby and we still frequently do over 100 orders a day.

 

[Moosechives]

(returns from the depths) We're getting a full pack station complete with printer, and equipment along with 7 more 3 tiers.
I sure hope the forecast for BF and Cyber Monday are a glitch because there is no way we're going to hire the amount of people required to finish that given that we're running a skeleton crew right now...

 

[SurefireWolf]

(returns from the depths) We're getting a full pack station complete with printer, and equipment along with 7 more 3 tiers.
I sure hope the forecast for BF and Cyber Monday are a glitch because there is no way we're going to hire the amount of people required to finish that given that we're running a skeleton crew right now...

Heh... what's your forecast? We've been doing SFS for about 2 years now. During the first few months our order cap was 50, so it wasn't all that bad. During Christmas the cap was 300 and it was a nightmare, mostly in part due to no staffing and inexperience. Last Christmas, for the week following Thanksgiving we got over 2000 orders a day. With 1 packstation and the wire half-packing station. We brought out tables and organized the area as best we could, but overall it seemed to run better than the year before. We may have missed some of the goal times, but there's nothing like coming in to work and seeing 700 orders in the gun along with 75 batches.

 

[H2Owned]

Heh... what's your forecast? We've been doing SFS for about 2 years now. During the first few months our order cap was 50, so it wasn't all that bad. During Christmas the cap was 300 and it was a nightmare, mostly in part due to no staffing and inexperience. Last Christmas, for the week following Thanksgiving we got over 2000 orders a day. With 1 packstation and the wire half-packing station. We brought out tables and organized the area as best we could, but overall it seemed to run better than the year before. We may have missed some of the goal times, but there's nothing like coming in to work and seeing 700 orders in the gun along with 75 batches.

Moosechives and I both work at ESFS but i believe his location has more ordera than mine.... right now our order cap is 300.... last Christmas our order cap was 1500..... for the week of Thanksgiving im not sure what our order cap was then..... but my STL said this cyber monday we are suppose to get almost double the amount of orders compared to last year

 

[Moosechives]

Yeah, we're one of the original esfs. We used to do 800 orders a day then this year we dropped to 200-300 with 4 people on a day. The hour drops made the core people move on. Eaches wise according to the forecast we're gonna be hit with over 4000 black friday thru cyber monday. (exact number is way higher) We're gonna go from 4 people per day to almost 30... theres so much wrong with that I dunno where to start lol

 

[BackroomBear]

This is just nuts. More TMs shopping in the store than some stores get guests!

 

[SFSFun]

I sure hope the forecast for BF and Cyber Monday are a glitch because there is no way we're going to hire the amount of people required to finish that given that we're running a skeleton crew right now...

I saw our Q4 forecast today but I don't know what to make of it. I have no clue how to compare the forecast of eaches to the actual amount of orders. And a lot of the days have a weirdly specific amount that changes each day (like 1843 one day and 1759 the next day).

I understand why they moved to eaches for the forecast, but it's really hard to use when it's not a number we know anything about without getting on the computer. With orders you see how many there are before batching, but there's no way to see the eaches on the PDA unless you enter each batch to see how many are in it.

 

[Moosechives]

I hate that they switched to eaches because yeah, I have no idea what that equals in terms of actual order amount. I think a safe way to estimate is the order amount is roughly half the each amount on the forecast. We've been 500s lately in eaches which shows up has avg 200-250ish batch orders when I come in. Lately we've been getting slammed with like 100+ orders close to the 1pm cutoff. That puts us right up to the usual 300 orders per day.

We're avging about 1700-1800 eaches for Nov and Dec so I'm gonna assume that'll be like close to 900 orders. This would be more of a piece of cake if we still had our veteran team in place instead of what we have left plus 20 new people that have no idea what they're doing running around.

 

[H2Owned]

Yeah, we're one of the original esfs. We used to do 800 orders a day then this year we dropped to 200-300 with 4 people on a day. The hour drops made the core people move on. Eaches wise according to the forecast we're gonna be hit with over 4000 black friday thru cyber monday. (exact number is way higher) We're gonna go from 4 people per day to almost 30... theres so much wrong with that I dunno where to start lol

I know your pain..... we lost over half our team last 4th quarter..... now we only have 3 vets left from when we launched ESFS.... and the new team members they kept from last 4th quarter are horrible pickers b/c all they did last 4th quarter was pack while the vets pick.... so we are screwed this 4th quarter..... and they are suppose to be hiring 40 team members this year for fulfillment so i wonder who is going to train them all.

 

[Flow Warrior]

I know your pain..... we lost over half our team last 4th quarter..... now we only have 3 vets left from when we launched ESFS.... and the new team members they kept from last 4th quarter are horrible pickers b/c all they did last 4th quarter was pack while the vets pick.... so we are screwed this 4th quarter..... and they are suppose to be hiring 40 team members this year for fulfillment so i wonder who is going to train them all.

NO ONE! ITS SPOT'S WAY!

 

[SurefireWolf]

So I have a single order that is costing our yearly fulfillment score to drop about 8 percentage points. The other day there was an order for 209 school supplies. Partway through the batch, it had me go back to the exact same locations to pick more of the same items. It had me do 20 the first time and 19 the next. I had to suspend the order, and it wanted the same items again. Always the same items, and always 19. I started scanning the items that were already in the cart rather than grab more. Eventually at the top of the screen it said things like "-50 out of 209 items remaining." The only things we really didn't have were a couple of pencils that it wanted 19 of.
When I got to the final screen (saying -87 out of 209) it told me I needed -60 sheets of paper, -60 sets of pens, and the 11 pencil sets that we didn't have. I could scan the notebook paper or pens, and it would ask for a quantity of -60. I couldn't put in a negative number and zero wouldn't work. I eventually had to not found NEGATIVE 120 items to scan in the batch. On the SFS daily report screen it said our fulfillment percentage was 102. I called the CSC and they didn't understand what I was trying to say.

On today's weekly report our fulfillment percentage is the lowest it has been in over a year and it is solely because of that one order. It claims that I not found a couple thousand items rather than just 11 pencils. CSC told me they can do nothing. We went from having the second highest fulfillment score YTD in the group to one of the worst overnight. CSC told me they can't do anything about it. I told my log-ETL about it before I left today. Is there anything I can do about this?

 

[slowhands]

Where can we go to see this Q4 forecast?

 

[SFSFun]

Is there anything I can do about this?

That is one of the most bizarre glitches I've ever heard of. As long as your ETL understands what happened, then there's nothing more that you can do. It's up to your ETL and STL to fix the metrics.

Where can we go to see this Q4 forecast?

Workbench > Store Reports > SFS Daily Order Forecast

Choose the store and the week and it will break it down. When I checked, it was missing October info but November and December were filled in.

 

[SrTLall]

126
277
280
278
413
439
454

Can someone tell me the order of which are used most frequently?

 

[SFSFun]

126
277
280
278
413
439
454

Can someone tell me the order of which are used most frequently?

For me,
439
126
413
454
278
280
277

I would say about the same for us. But it's worth noting that we go through far more pallets of 439s than 126s because there are way more 126s per pallet. So we go through a pallet of 439s in about 10 days, but like 6 months for a pallet of 126s.

 

[SrTLall]

We are prepping our space and have 28 pallet spaces adjacent to the pack station and 4 pallet spaces for overflow/emergency.

 

[Lazy]

For me,
439
126
413
454
278
280
277

However, for the three weeks we had no 439's,
454
454
454
454
454
454
278

No 439?? I've run out twice due to mislabelling pallets but I usually call a neighboring store to borrow a couple bundles till the order comes in

 

[SFSFun]

We are prepping our space and have 28 pallet spaces adjacent to the pack station and 4 pallet spaces for overflow/emergency.

28 permanent spaces!? We have 14 (not including the ones for opened pallets), and two of them are used for bubble wrap.

No 439?? I've run out twice due to mislabelling pallets but I usually call a neighboring store to borrow a couple bundles till the order comes in

After making that mistake more than once, I labeled each pallet space with the magnetic labels and I stick to it. If the space is labeled for 439s, then that's the only thing that goes there. It also makes it quicker to audit the supplies.

 

[Kroneru]

They're unlocated in my store.

Is this true or did you forget the sarcastic font?

Ours have been unlocated for 3-4 months if not longer.

 

[SFSFun]

Ours have been unlocated for 3-4 months if not longer.

I can see them trying to do that at my store because softlines errors are through the roof. But they'll just use it as an excuse to never pull from the back, just like they did with hanging backstock after it was meticulously organized.

If they do suggest it at my store, I'm just going to show my STL the pictures on my phone of all of the kids swim that was still back there in August.

 

[Kroneru]

>swim
>August

Spoiler