Archived I need help tweaking our SL truck breakout process so we can come clean same day ASAP

[lijepaprinceza]

As the title states, I am in desperate immediate need of a more efficient SL truck breakout process so we can come clean same day no later than 4:30pm. I have tried & failed several times to improve our process to be more efficient but I am hitting brick walls. Any ideas, processes that work for your store, or advice on perhaps taking a more mathmatical approach would be greatly appreciated. We get 4 trucks per week on Monday, Weds, Fri & Sat and we average 13 pallets a truck. I currently have 4 Style TMs who woke the break out process and who honestly do not have productivity issues. We have been rolling trucks into trucks & the expectation is truck has to be complete no later than 4:30&rolling truck is absolutely not an option. I was also just informed I can only have 2 TMs to breakout going forward, so shit just real. I would also appreciate any feedback on any metrics regarding how long a typical SL pallet should take to break out and how long it should take to push said pallet. Logistically there has to be a viable solution.

 

[Yev]

How many repacks is 13 pallets? I'm on a two person breakout but I probably have less truck.

 

[Thunderbird1956]

I was going to say we have 2 or sometimes 3 for the breakout, but we rarely have 13 pallets of just softlines repacks. 13 pallets should be right about 325-350 repacks.

 

[Logo]

2 to breakout 325 repacks!! Daily!? Your trucks must be HUGE! I freak when we get 325 for total truck!
Break out is key to getting into your zones early. How long does break out take? Are you a 4am, 6am process? Who does it? Is there an area that is constantly being rolled?

 

[Him]

10pm overnight process here so take this advice for what it's worth. What I have seen work successfully is to have tm's according to freight. What I mean by that is, if you have 4 tm's, and 13 pallets in a extreme case as you descibed, can 2 tm's concentrate on Basics breakout and 2 tm's concentrate on Hanging Softlines breakdown? Also, how is the support from the rest of your store? That too is the key to your overall success. Your team should at least effectively breakout/breakdown everything. If the shift to follow ONLY has to push basics and Z Racks, I think everyone should win.

 

[Rock Lobster]

I was going to say we have 2 or sometimes 3 for the breakout, but we rarely have 13 pallets of just softlines repacks. 13 pallets should be right about 325-350 repacks.

To clarify, when the trailer has a total of 320+ repacks, you are saying that Softlines gets about 13 pallets of those? But this should not be daily, since Softlines freight fluctuates so drastically truck to truck.

The reason Softlines will struggle is that the system is not designed to get it all worked in the same day. You are supposed to schedule to the guest, not the truck, and work freight in between. For example, if you take a truck Monday, the payroll to get freight worked for Softlines is spent on Monday and Tuesday, and then it starts over Wednesday.

 

[jlog]

Wow. I can't even imagine only 2 tms for breakout.

We get our breakout done in 2-3 hours, but it's very systematic and we have 5-6 tms (unheard of, I know). I am at a low volume store that gets 3 trucks a week with 8-12 pallets and we don't start until after 8am. I wouldn't even know how to tweak it to work for 2 tms and still have things organized and easy to push. The lowest we've ever had was 4.

Break out is key to getting into your zones early.

What I have seen work successfully is to have tm's according to freight.

Yes to these points. We breakout fast because we have the people. We have 3 that work on folded, 2 that detrash hanging and 1 that runs the hanging. So in your case, have 1 that just does folded while the other does hanging? Or divide the folded stuff, like 1 does GBI/baby hardlines and then the other does mens/womens/accessories? And then after that, they can work on hanging where one detrashes while the other runs them onto the Zracks? Just thinking about it sounds like a long, awful process.

 

[Noiinteam]

I do the de trashing for my store. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday trucks. We average 5 pallets of softlines per truck. 1 full case packs, 1 brown and black repacks and the rest green repacks. We are a 6 am unload. We detrash off the floor on backside of bulk starting between 8 and 8:15. We were a team of 2. Failed miserably. Truck was not getting pushed. Rolled for days. I bitched endlessly. Now we have myself and 1 other girl that is flow. The other 3 are softlines tms. We just work pallets 1 at a time. We have bakers racks and z racks for hanging. We are usually done between 10 and 10:30. It honestly depends how ugly the green repacks are. We detrash everything but socks and underwear. When done we leave everything back there and the softline girls come back and grab what their tl tells them to do. As flow people we don't push softlines. There usually are 2 other softlines people on the floor while we are de trashing. For the past month they have racks clean by next truck. It was a shit show this past 4th quarter when we took trucks everyday for a month. The key to successful de trashing and pushing is getting enough hours and tms to push truck as soon as possible. On a heavy day of pallets 7 or 8 my tl would ask how many we were going to do. I always said all of them because you get into a serious downhill slide that takes weeks to recover from. My personal saving grace is not having to push, just detrash and walk away. Wishing you luck and still praying everyday for palletized trucks!

 

[Logo]

1 that runs the hanging.

How is this done?

 

[jlog]

How is this done?

We have 2 de-trashing. We each have a cart with a garbage bag in it. We hang the clothes on the handle of the cart. I try my best to hang the clothes in the order that the z-racks are in to save steps for the tm that's then putting the clothes on the appropriate z-racks.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

As the title states, I am in desperate immediate need of a more efficient SL truck breakout process so we can come clean same day no later than 4:30pm. I have tried & failed several times to improve our process to be more efficient but I am hitting brick walls. Any ideas, processes that work for your store, or advice on perhaps taking a more mathmatical approach would be greatly appreciated. We get 4 trucks per week on Monday, Weds, Fri & Sat and we average 13 pallets a truck. I currently have 4 Style TMs who woke the break out process and who honestly do not have productivity issues. We have been rolling trucks into trucks & the expectation is truck has to be complete no later than 4:30&rolling truck is absolutely not an option. I was also just informed I can only have 2 TMs to breakout going forward, so shit just real. I would also appreciate any feedback on any metrics regarding how long a typical SL pallet should take to break out and how long it should take to push said pallet. Logistically there has to be a viable solution.

The process is not designed to work this way. The schedule should flux based on needs. Sat/Sun should have more tms than other days.

That aside, the process is meant to be fluid to account for guest traffic.

By dictating the process how they are, it sounds much more like theyre setting up to performance you out by forcing you into failure.

 

[Logo]

There is waaaaay too much walking during break out! It would be awesome if green repacks contain only hanging and black only folded then you could sent up 2 horse shoes one works on GOH(garments on hangers) and someone could work the folded.

 

[Yev]

I'm on a two person 6am unload breakout team. A 300+ total repack truck usually means I'll be there for 8-9 hours. 250 or less repacks is not a full day but more is most likely going to be heavy softlines for us. I don't start breaking out until 8am because I have to help the unload and clear space in the backroom to set up carts and racks behind the line. I finish breaking out the folded solo at 11:30a at the most. After that I break out hanging with the other person until it's done. Softlines tms shifts start between 9a-11a so they can zone/reshop and push carts first then push racks in the early afternoon. When the trucks are heavy/lots of new product only half the racks might get pushed and SL has to catch up eventually so we have enough zracks throughout the week.

I use 12 carts to sort and get more to replace full ones as needed. I don't detrash any of the folded at all. For hanging I use 2 racks and a cart for trash. Kids and infants on one rack and RTW mens on the other. As I detrash I keep boys girls etc in separate corners of the rack. RTW is separated by brand and that rack always fills up. I'll take a handful of one brand and move it to its final rack as needed. If I don't have time then I will leave the kids rack alone because the same tm pushes all those sections. I can also shove my full RTW rack to the side and keep going on an empty one because the pushing tm will just take whatever brand she is working on. We used to do a detailed sort of shirts on top pants on bottom and by size but now the minimum sort is just by each department or rtw brand.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Softlines coming clean in my store is laughable. Ever since they moved to the backroom it's been impossible for us in backroom to come clean since their in the way. Softlines needs to be back out on the floor or move into the garden center

 

[herekittykitty]

My question would be, why is your A&A team doing break out? That is not the role of an A&A team member. That is part of the flow process & should be done by flow team members.

 

[Logo]

My question would be, why is your A&A team doing break out? That is not the role of an A&A team member. That is part of the flow process & should be done by flow team members.

In my store the break out is being done by former flow team members who now are style. They are scheduled at 6 under unload.

 

[sprinklesontop]

My question would be, why is your A&A team doing break out? That is not the role of an A&A team member. That is part of the flow process & should be done by flow team members.

In my store the break out is being done by former flow team members who now are style. They are scheduled at 6 under unload.

We have two A&A TMs doing the break-out; but they're scheduled as Flow during that time. Then they are back to A&A after a few hours. Is it safe to say, eventually, when the final layer of E2E kicks in..... the A&A Team will be addressing their own break-out? So, no need to separate the hours from Flow (or unload) or A&A (softlines).

 

[herekittykitty]

I see, I didn't understand that the A&A team members were being scheduled under flow for breakout.
So my next question is, why does it have to be done by 4:30?
Our A&A team doesn't even start pushing truck until noon.

Flow does breakout starting at 9 a.m.
2 A&A team members come in at 8. 1 goes to the fitting room & 1 does pricing.
2 A&A team members come in at 10. 1 goes to the fitting room & 1 starts on any workload for the day.
2 A&A team members come in at 12. 1 goes to the fitting room, 1 is added to pricing if needed, everyone else starts pushing truck, reshop & zoning.
2 A&A team members come in at 2. 1 goes to the fitting room, everyone else is pushing truck, reshop & zoning.
2 A&A team members come in at 3. 1 goes to the fitting room, everyone else is pushing truck, reshop & zoning.

That schedule is followed every truck day. For non truck days, we eliminate 1 person at 10, 12 & 2.
Truck is almost always complete by 8 pm. Team members spend the remainder of the night zoning & working reshop.

 

[speedy]

For our morning process we do this:
1-TM at 6am to do the unload for all HBA, all Softlines, Hardlines Repacks (we have 2 unloaders that alternate days)
1-TM at 6:30 to work Infant Hardlines Truck/backstock excess infants
2-TM's at 7am, one assists Infants, the other starts autofills and pulls the infant autofills to floor
1-TM at 9am to begin working freight

When the unload is finished, the 6am TM and one of the 7am TM's then begin detrashing and sorting folding and incorporating softlines pulls into the freight.
As soon as folding is finished, same 2 TM's are starting hanging softlines.
At least some of the folding freight is finished by 9am. The two TM's working on Infant hardlines and the 9am TM take the freight to the floor that is ready

We are generally finished with hanging by 11, when the unloader is scheduled to leave. The remaining TM's work freight and backstock infant furniture.
We do finish our truck by 1pm most of the time.

Our hanging softlines TM comes in later in the day, somewhere between 1-2pm to work the Z's.

I will say this about our process. Having a Softlines specific unloader really helps the team. The softlines repacks and casepacks are separated onto 6 pallets, 1 tub and 1 flat right off the truck and this makes it very easy to move things around and keep things organized in a way to expedite our work. We are fortunate to have the room we need to do these things in the backroom.

We have not used carts for almost a year now. We can only use flats or tubs to push freight.