Archived I'm in the backroom but was now given Instocks as well. How do you run it?

[incredulu]

Hi everyone!

Just was wondering what some of your instocks days were like. I have a training day coming soon, so to be honest I don't even know what they do! I just know I pull their batches sometimes.

What days do you guys do what?

And I know a big part of instocks is getting the out of stock score down. How do you guys go about doing that?

Any tips would be great!

 

[Jack of all Workcenters]

Don't half ass your way through instocks and I won't be mad at you later. Scan critical lows, items with only a couple present, and out where there is nothing. Remember to considering untied end caps when doing Research. Also, scan the item in the location, not the location label itself. So many times stuff is in the wrong space and that will screw up counts and replenishment.

 

[BRMember]

And watch for bad zones! They have pulled me off of instocks because of this. They would ask me why I only shot one or two aisles in the task list. I would respond with well the zone was so horrible I had to almost super zone the aisle to be able to shoot it lol. After all I wouldn't want to zero out a count only to find it in the next section.

 

[cl8baller]

In an ideal world backroom would usually pull Instock batches for instocks to push; in reality we do reshop, zone, scan, fast service, flexible fulfillment, pull, and push.

But another thing to note, don't let your scans go to waste and forget about drastic count, my ETL-AP had to explain to my ETL-GE that it had to get done or our efforts scanning would be wasted when we are missing high counts, we typical find a lot of stuff in places they shouldn't be on the days we work drastic.

Oh! And work well with your other team leads, you're in their department, take this time to audit how well they take care of their department in terms of zone, label maintenance, and planogram setting, if you can get them cooperating and working with you to better their department, it will help the instocks process in the end. Can't zone without a planogram, can't zone what product with don't have, can't expect product we don't scan to come in, can't expect to make sales and vibe without product.

Good luck!

 

[Circle9]

Hi everyone!

Just was wondering what some of your instocks days were like. I have a training day coming soon, so to be honest I don't even know what they do! I just know I pull their batches sometimes.

What days do you guys do what?

And I know a big part of instocks is getting the out of stock score down. How do you guys go about doing that?

Any tips would be great!

Every store probably does instocks differently; not sure if everyone's switched over to the newer process. Instocks' schedule at my store is something like this:
Saturday and Sunday: Scan all non-dotted outs in the store. More often I'm filling back endcaps or helping finish ad setup though.
Mondays: Filling checklanes, endcaps and sidecaps. Putting up the labels for PTM and dropping PTM batches to be pushed later.
Tuesdays: Scan all outs, dotted or not on the task list for hardlines (minus grocery)
Wednesdays: Same as above, but for grocery and softlines. Also somebody comes in two hours early to push PTMs.
Thursdays: Filling checklanes, endcaps and sidecaps.
Fridays: Scanning all outs in the top and bottom departments that week. Various other tasks.

ANd of course the RIGs on all those days. Drastic counts report when we get the time.

Your main way of improving instocks' scores (from the guest's side) is actually less about making sure counts are accurate and more about the shelves looking full. At least that's what I've gathered from when our store somehow scores high in the district for instocks despite it feeling like a mess most weeks.

How smoothly your job will be depends on quality of the zone, size of the task list, how many people you have and how on board the rest of the store is regarding things like proper flexing. Or making sure all transition product is pushed; nothing like finding out those pillows that keep popping up on the count report? Sitting on a pallet of home decor transition from a reset, oh, two or more weeks ago? Just do what you can, try for accuracy first; speed comes later if you do this enough.

 

[AKADuchess]

Every store probably does instocks differently; not sure if everyone's switched over to the newer process. Instocks' schedule at my store is something like this:
Saturday and Sunday: Scan all non-dotted outs in the store. More often I'm filling back endcaps or helping finish ad setup though.
Mondays: Filling checklanes, endcaps and sidecaps. Putting up the labels for PTM and dropping PTM batches to be pushed later.
Tuesdays: Scan all outs, dotted or not on the task list for hardlines (minus grocery)
Wednesdays: Same as above, but for grocery and softlines. Also somebody comes in two hours early to push PTMs.
Thursdays: Filling checklanes, endcaps and sidecaps.
Fridays: Scanning all outs in the top and bottom departments that week. Various other tasks.

ANd of course the RIGs on all those days. Drastic counts report when we get the time.

Your main way of improving instocks' scores (from the guest's side) is actually less about making sure counts are accurate and more about the shelves looking full. At least that's what I've gathered from when our store somehow scores high in the district for instocks despite it feeling like a mess most weeks.

How smoothly your job will be depends on quality of the zone, size of the task list, how many people you have and how on board the rest of the store is regarding things like proper flexing. Or making sure all transition product is pushed; nothing like finding out those pillows that keep popping up on the count report? Sitting on a pallet of home decor transition from a reset, oh, two or more weeks ago? Just do what you can, try for accuracy first; speed comes later if you do this enough.

^^^^
All of this. Im also a BR/Instock TL who's OOS was at 12.5 when I took over a few months ago, its now down to 9. If we noticed that after scanning an section (say a reset POG or a endcap) and noticing that nothing had come in for that, instruct your team to stop scanning it. We have this a whole lot in soft-lines. Take the POG # or some of the DPCI's and MySupport them. Let SPOT tell you what to do with it. You eliminate multiple scan's, which can kill you, and you now can get HQ to give you clear (well sometimes) direction as to if its coming or if you need to flex in its space. After my 1st walk with our Group and District TL's, they told me to do this and its worked wonders for me.