MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[badcrumble]

Does anyone have any tips for attacking OPUs? My TL was trying where I’m picking from the ones that just pop in to create some kind of time gap but they pop in so fast I just don’t see a difference. Today I was going old school & running 7 carts at the same time but it just isn’t working like we thought it would. We are very high volume OPU but I know some others out there are higher. Anything would help if you found something that works.

I'm having the same experience, picking several newer batches at once to try to relieve the pressure and it's not having any effect. Picking 15ish items at a time seems to be a losing battle, though, too. (But admittedly faster to put into hold, if you can get into the overcrowded hold area.)
The store has way too many guests for us to maneuver through the aisles, even with leaving the carts behind in the racetrack, and fighting the checkout lines to get to our hold is nearly impossible sometimes.
In my store's case, we simply need more pickers. When we have 10+ carts going, we can clear the queue. Anything less and we're just Sisyphus trying to push that boulder uphill.

 

[MrT]

Unless the batch is extremely small ive only been having them take one batch at a time. Many of my team members take there own printers and have bags on thier carts so they arent all bunched up on each other since we are supposed to social distance. It allows them to get back out there quicker and do more and remain flexible. With the small amount of ship ive also had them jumping in more often then id like. Idk if its possible in your store but ive had to have way more people in opu then before usually atleast 10 people. We also make it a point that we have an overnight person, 4am person, and 6am person to make sure its clear for when the morning rush hits.

 

[ttr001]

I'm having the same experience, picking several newer batches at once to try to relieve the pressure and it's not having any effect. Picking 15ish items at a time seems to be a losing battle, though, too. (But admittedly faster to put into hold, if you can get into the overcrowded hold area.)
The store has way too many guests for us to maneuver through the aisles, even with leaving the carts behind in the racetrack, and fighting the checkout lines to get to our hold is nearly impossible sometimes.
In my store's case, we simply need more pickers. When we have 10+ carts going, we can clear the queue. Anything less and we're just Sisyphus trying to push that boulder uphill.

Yeah it’s damn impossible to break through the crowds to find an item that hopefully is even near where it’s supposed to be. Let alone not get twenty questions from said crowd while doing your impossible task of breaking through them in the first place.

Honestly, how does anyone manage this crowd issue? To me adding more pickers would only then serve to add workers in your way in addition to the guests

 

[Frontlanegirl]

Not working today but yesterday was absolute hell, I came in at 3 p.m. to like 300+ opus and had to pick and pack 3 carts for ship before 4:30, apparently there is some issue with our toy, seasonal, and style inventory cause I've inf'd the same item this whole week so our sfs inf was 30%. We had like 8 people in opu until 5 and it was only 4 of us until store close, at one point we had like 200 late units and they just told us to not pick those and focus on the ones we could get done. Our pick on time ended at like 55%, but we weren't worst in our district, that record was held by the store right next to us with a wopping 35% pick on time and one point had 1,000+ late units and is like top 10 in the company for sales and I left at 2 am to like 300 opus and they still had late units. Great job with this 90 minute goal time corporate...

Sounds like what my store was dealing with.

 

[gman192]

Update on my post from last night... my morning captain snapchatted me at 4:15 this morning with a pic of her Zebra showing 926 DPCIs in the OPU queue. That is the second highest number I have ever seen doing fulfillment at my store. I came in at 9AM this morning to an all-hands-on-deck already called and 13 pickup batches in progress... all of them late already, lol. Thankfully SD understood the situation completely. I will credit my team, though, I did see a lot of good speeds today. Finally got OPUs under 100 around 4:00 and POT around 75%.

Corporate you want 90 min time limit for opu than you deal with the infs and/or late items. We got lucky that today’s sfs was only 1item or we would have been screwed. I was the only one to touch SFS today and that wasn’t until 3PM due to the insane amount of OPU.

Does anyone remember the day after Easter where corporate put it at 7 hours because they didn't think we could handle the overload? I think social distancing played a factor in this too. Man, how attitudes have changed, even in the middle of a COVID crisis. But yeah, you are correct. Faster goal times generally do increase INF, especially in the hard-to-find areas or same-day freight. If you would poll the general public on... A) faster but less accurate service [2 hours but may have missing items] or B) slightly slower but more accurate service [4 hours but better chance of getting everything you wanted] ... call me dumb, but I think more people would choose B. They claim this was to put them in a better competitive advantage in accordance with carrier capacity, but I disagree. They already were an industry powerhouse at 4 hours. Heck, just look at their top competitor - Walmart. Order by X-time and you'll get to pick it up sometime later that day, otherwise it's tomorrow.

 

[thebroche]

So essentially place new/slow pickers in a spot where they feel even more rushed, thereby INF’ng things that are clearly actually there even more? Stressing newbies out to the point where they’re making even more mistakes than what would’ve happened otherwise? I don’t know. I don’t know much but this just sounds extremely counterproductive in every way possible

Fair Point. It's what's worked for my store, but ASANTS.

 

[moninity]

We had the majority of the store helping us the whole day that the freight from the truck was barely touched. Wow that’s very productive isn’t it Corporate?

 

[seasonaldude]

Unless the batch is extremely small ive only been having them take one batch at a time.

That's what I've been doing personally. I'd expect productivity to go down this time of year because of the crowds, the types of orders we get, and the store's messiness. That's true for most of my team this year. But, with one batch I've been able to keep my productivity pretty close to normal. It let's me easily abuse the fuck out of skip, including the backroom. That makes a big difference. Come January, when Christmas orders end more than one batch will like be better though.

 

[rd123]

How can we effectively pick batches when there is only 20-25 min left .!! I had to INf atleast 3 things that might be around somewhere ! But what is more important pick time or inf?? I went with time .

 

[MrT]

Ive found its been most effective to have enough people in opu to handle atleast double the batches. Payroll might not allow for it in all stores and it has been a struggle at times in mine. If there is 10 people in opu, then ill only allow 20 (30 total 10 being worked 20 left to be picked) batches to be pickable before i start pulling people from other areas. I call right away that way they have time to finish up what they are doing. I would say at minimum i have 50 minutes left to pick a batch. If there is anything less then that im pulling the next person i see to get it. My store is very flexible with me though i do have to call the team leads of the areas im taking from and they tell me who i get, not always the best but if someone can't do a 14 item batch with 50 minutes left then they shouldnt be working there in the first place. Pre 90 minute goal i never took my ship team but i have supplemented opu with then pretty much every day since the goals changed. Controlling breaks has been another issue im working on i just cant afford to have too many people on there 30s at a time. 15s i dont really care about.

 

[MrT]

That's what I've been doing personally. I'd expect productivity to go down this time of year because of the crowds, the types of orders we get, and the store's messiness. That's true for most of my team this year. But, with one batch I've been able to keep my productivity pretty close to normal. It let's me easily abuse the fuck out of skip, including the backroom. That makes a big difference. Come January, when Christmas orders end more than one batch will like be better though.

Yeah i had been having people do multiple batches at first but it just leads to too many issues id rather know exactly what is going on. Post holidays i expect the same thing, with it beimg much more viable.

 

[MrT]

(But admittedly faster to put into hold, if you can get into the overcrowded hold area.)

Idk if your store has enough zebra printers, we have a ton idk why, but having your own printer and a stash of bags on the carts has allowed my team to get in and out much more quickly. We do have 2 small areas one behind gs and one in front of gs as well as a bit bigger of an area behind trend spot that has a few rows. It makes congestion up front much less allowing people to just go to different sections instead of congregating around the bags and printers.

 

[Tessa120]

Update on my post from last night... my morning captain snapchatted me at 4:15 this morning with a pic of her Zebra showing 926 DPCIs in the OPU queue. That is the second highest number I have ever seen doing fulfillment at my store. I came in at 9AM this morning to an all-hands-on-deck already called and 13 pickup batches in progress... all of them late already, lol. Thankfully SD understood the situation completely. I will credit my team, though, I did see a lot of good speeds today. Finally got OPUs under 100 around 4:00 and POT around 75%.


Does anyone remember the day after Easter where corporate put it at 7 hours because they didn't think we could handle the overload? I think social distancing played a factor in this too. Man, how attitudes have changed, even in the middle of a COVID crisis. But yeah, you are correct. Faster goal times generally do increase INF, especially in the hard-to-find areas or same-day freight. If you would poll the general public on... A) faster but less accurate service [2 hours but may have missing items] or B) slightly slower but more accurate service [4 hours but better chance of getting everything you wanted] ... call me dumb, but I think more people would choose B. They claim this was to put them in a better competitive advantage in accordance with carrier capacity, but I disagree. They already were an industry powerhouse at 4 hours. Heck, just look at their top competitor - Walmart. Order by X-time and you'll get to pick it up sometime later that day, otherwise it's tomorrow.

Speaking as someone who enjoys DU, I have never once rushed out the door when I got the confirmation email. If I need it that fast I just need to drag my lazy ass in, rather than time it for when I'm already out. I do want all my items though, rather than having to plan a trip somewhere else to find what was missed.

 

[seasonaldude]

How can we effectively pick batches when there is only 20-25 min left .!! I had to INf atleast 3 things that might be around somewhere ! But what is more important pick time or inf?? I went with time .

When pressed for time, make sure you got every location things are supposed to be. Goal time be damned. But, looking beyond that is a no. Check with your lead though about what is preferred at your store.

 

[rd123]

When pressed for time, make sure you got every location things are supposed to be. Goal time be damned. But, looking beyond that is a no. Check with your lead though about what is preferred at your store.

It’s clearly time in our store because inf is red for almost all areas but pick times are all green! I ask if not familiar with the dept . If it’s dry grocery , I’m well aware of most else ask someone and pfresh “double check with Tm and TL “ at all times 🙄

 

[ttr001]

Today was very easy and slow. Snowy day out, nasty day out, nothing much happened today. Shipping is ahead by 2 days, there were several of us actually zoning because no OPUs were dropping after 3

 

[DatBoi9497]

Guess the mess from Saturday and Sunday scared our district people cause our etl added a shit load of hours and now we're back to the fulfillment grid being larger than GM again. Could've used this help last weekend...

 

[ttr001]

K

Guess the mess from Saturday and Sunday scared our district people cause our etl added a shit load of hours and now we're back to the fulfillment grid being larger than GM again. Could've used this help last weekend...

Agreed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Felt great not to be stressed out of mind though, and having time for breathing

 

[happygoth]

Today was very easy and slow. Snowy day out, nasty day out, nothing much happened today. Shipping is ahead by 2 days, there were several of us actually zoning because no OPUs were dropping after 3

I think that might have been the situation at my store last night, as some random TM that I never saw before came over and started pushing my reshop - thank you random TM!

 

[JiJi]

Christ the time reduction on OPU has really screwed us over - We did okay on the first day, but we didn't make Ship on time the next few days because we had to pull everyone into OPU. Our pick time in OPU was less than 70% at one point, even with 12 people in it. This week so far has been okay because ship has been so light, but if we get over 500 forecast, we struggle and end up with carryover.

 

[MrT]

Giant shop forecast today. Nobody scheduled in the store double truck tonight and now i cant take anyone from style. Guess ill just have 4 people in opu and 500 orders to do

 

[vngoghlvr]

I'm the only leader in the building for over 4 hours today, I have a skeleton crew, and they want me to help knock out price change. Pray for me, lol

 

[MrT]

At one point had over 1000 overdue opu units in today. Became blatantly obvious we couldnt keep up with demand today at like 10am. Was told to focus on the 2000 ship units we got on. Missed the 430 goal, made a plan to get it all done by store close. Right before i leave after getting everything planned, they decide they want opu caught up. On the bright side i learned something new. Apparently itll only show you up to 30 batches in there for opu definitely had closer to 80 batches maybe more since they cut them off for only 3 orders per batch

 

[seasonaldude]

We essentially punted on OPU goal time yesterday. Our biggest problem is that salesfloor work isn't getting done because salesfloor TMs are constantly backing up fulfillment and guest services. GM freight is falling behind. Beauty hasn't been pushed in days. Style's zone looks like a herd of elephants stampeded through. Etc. So we sent a couple of OPU pickers to the registers to limit backup calls there and let the salesfloor try to get some work done, goal time be damned. We're hoping that will make things easier for OPU to handle the flood of orders we're expecting this weekend.

 

[moninity]

Has anyone encountered a glitch with prepping? For over a month it there has been 3 items to prep yet there is nothing. We have no time to call CSC to clear it and was wondering if there is a way to clear it from the store itself.