Archived Instock Team Help

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Cntrydisney

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So our instocks team has three TM's plus our TL. We scan research Tuesday's and Wednesday's and never finish by 11 but scan still it's all done. We each scan our own areas do your stores do this or do you all scan together? We scan Softlines and Snacks on Tuesday's and always have zone issues and grey dots not being removed. Wednesday's we scan everything else. Entertainment always takes forever now since it's not in the list. Multiple locations are never stocked. We usually help the truck if they aren't doing good as all of us are also flow TM's. So we work flow 4-8 then IS 8-11,1130,12,1230,130,2 all depends. I usually start scanning at 8 on Tuesday's. If the list drops at 630 I don't know why we're not scheduled then. This just continues to get frustrating and stressful. We're held accountable but it seems like no one else in the store is. Any advice to make it less stressful and fun again (if that's even possible) and to get us green.
I look forward to all the feedback both good or bad. Thanks
 
Can't you pawn off entertainment scans to electronics TMs and whoever sets revisions there?
 
My store also has 3 TMs for scan days. We do SL on Tues & everything else on Wed. We separate the list and we each do our own list, but help our other TMs if we finish scanning first. Our shifts are from 7-12 and we help flow on Truck days where we're responsible for 4 aisles and we start our scans immediately after we're done.

I don't know why entertainment isn't in your list though, it's always in ours.

As for the gray dots, I think that's always going to be an issue. I make an effort to make sure new TMs know to remove them and have brought it up at huddle.

I personally hate in stocks because it seems like we're constantly scanning the same items every week. I have never found it to be fun, lol.
 
Good luck on grey dots. I'm about ready to stop putting them up because the only people who take them down are instocks and maaaaybe two people on flow. Our team usually splits up and tackles different areas of the store; only really work in the same area if we're on a task list and finishing up the last entries.

Instocks is never going to stop being frustrating; if its going smoothly its because you haven't found what's wrong yet. For all the stress it gives me, there's days when I feel like I really accomplished something (mostly from unfucking some LOD's whack-ass flexing job or finding a pallet of overdue transition in the steel). But mostly it feels like I'm Sisyphus and people are throwing boulders at me :/

backroomguy said:
You no longer have to research entertainment, books or seasonal, only on an as needed basis.
Click to expand...
Oh hey, is that why entertainment hasn't shown up on a list at my store for four weeks now? Because my instocks TL and ETL-LOG have no clue why this is happening. We haven't scanned entertainment for about 2 weeks now (unless somebody non-instocks is doing it) because we're behind enough as it is without having to schedule time for yet another thing.

BlueSide said:
There IS someone scheduled in that department every morning.
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Not at my store. On non-truck days it isn't unusual for nobody to be back there for an hour or two. Nothing like having to go all the way up to guest services for keys so a guest can buy a graphing calculator. And when they do get back there they're probably busy working on reshop or trying to drive AAR and other sales stuff. They don't have time to research.
 
@Circle9 Is your store short of the hours it wants? Are they delegating responsibility for different departments to electronics TMs? This dept. is a specialty area, and TMs should be trained and staffed so that they can take on a multitude of tasks that would normally be taken on by separate workcenters. Instocks, presentation and sales floor training are all necessary for success in this high selling specialty area.

PS. Why isn't there an opener? MyTime schedules an opener everyday. Sometimes it's earlier (for new releases) depending on volume. Someone's changing it to cut hours every week.
 
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BlueSide said:
@Circle9 Is your store short of the hours it wants? Are they delegating responsibility for different departments to electronics TMs? This dept. is a specialty area, and TMs should be trained and staffed so that they can take on a multitude of tasks that would normally be taken on by separate workcenters. Instocks, presentation and sales floor training are all necessary for success in this high selling specialty area.

PS. Why isn't there an opener? MyTime schedules an opener everyday. Sometimes it's earlier (for new releases) depending on volume. Someone's changing it to cut hours every week.
Click to expand...

Okay, so electronics isn't unstaffed at 8a every day. Probably close enough though On truck days there's somebody over there! Busy pushing what came off the truck. A non-flow TM shows up an hour or so later I think. Sundays will have an opener, assuming leadership could spare the hours to have them come in 2 hours early for ad setup, otherwise like the rest of the week who knows? It varies; the Sunday thing only just started up again after a couple months of not having the hours or whatever. I know they do some things with arranging the CDs and setting a few salesplanners (though mostly I've seen it just in toys across the racetrack) but researching? Highly unlikely.

And I found out in the last few days that our store apparently does have a brand TM for entertainment. Its the same person who pushes the trucks. Pretty sure that's the only time he's over there. Could be wrong though.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Maybe that's why entertainment isn't in there. Like you were saying we don't scan it anymore. That would be nice, it's never zoned anyway. Especially CD's. Now do you ask the backroom or just check what is not back stocked yet so if you find there are on hands you can just skip them and only scan the zeros? The ETL's I don't think get how sometimes pointless and time consuming it is to scan. Like scanning checklanes. it's always the same pointless stuff and it's usually all there except for 1 or 2 lanes, but you count it and if it doesn't match, it shows up on the drastic count report.
 
BlueSide said:
@Cntrydisney Instocks is currently in the middle of some huge changes. An updated guide is probably very difficult right now.
Click to expand...

When isn't it undergoing changes? Target never knew what it was doing with the process in the first place, and it has been a constant experiment ever since its start. We need to streamline our supply chain processes in the company and ensure we are "clean" in all stores (not clean by 90% of the store's standards, but clean on all freight including repacks and softlines and all backstock without a single flat getting left over). We need to perfect our just in time inventory even more. That would fix most of the issues, and then we can form instocks around what is missed. As of right now, we are trying to stop the Mississippi River with a beaver dam.
 
@Rock Lobster You make good sense! It was an experiment and it's on its way out lol. That's why so many stores aren't replacing their instocks TMs. asants and shit though.
 
instocks at my store is basically used as a jack of all trades. we're quite successful at scanning on tuesday and wednesdays (which are the days we scan the entire store) so thursday-monday we scan some more stuff and purge certain isles in the backroom, to try and fill the floor more. we do a bunch of random crap for tl's of all workcenters. we are also trained in almost every workcenter.
 
I made the suggestion of having different color dots to my DTL the other day and he didn't like the idea although I thought it would help instocks. Say the first week of the month we would use red dots second week we would use blue. And so on. But he just said we should just practice strong instocks routines. But I think that would help quite a bit of having a better idea of when it was researched. Eh just an idea.
 
RedX said:
I made the suggestion of having different color dots to my DTL the other day and he didn't like the idea although I thought it would help instocks. Say the first week of the month we would use red dots second week we would use blue. And so on. But he just said we should just practice strong instocks routines. But I think that would help quite a bit of having a better idea of when it was researched. Eh just an idea.
Click to expand...
I like that idea! I wish I felt like scanning actually did anything. Yes, we have batches from research, but 90% of the stuff we scan has been out of stock for weeks. How hard is it to send the stuff that sells, Target?!
 
Does it say somewhere on workbench not to scan entertainment, books or seasonal anymore?
 
BlueSide said:
@Circle9 Is your store short of the hours it wants? Are they delegating responsibility for different departments to electronics TMs? This dept. is a specialty area, and TMs should be trained and staffed so that they can take on a multitude of tasks that would normally be taken on by separate workcenters. Instocks, presentation and sales floor training are all necessary for success in this high selling specialty area.

PS. Why isn't there an opener? MyTime schedules an opener everyday. Sometimes it's earlier (for new releases) depending on volume. Someone's changing it to cut hours every week.
Click to expand...
My store doesn't schedule anyone in electronics till 11am weekdays. Payroll sucks in low volume.
 
RedX said:
I made the suggestion of having different color dots to my DTL the other day and he didn't like the idea although I thought it would help instocks. Say the first week of the month we would use red dots second week we would use blue. And so on. But he just said we should just practice strong instocks routines. But I think that would help quite a bit of having a better idea of when it was researched. Eh just an idea.
Click to expand...
I made the same suggestion about 2 years ago and got shot down. We started writing on the dots and got in trouble on a visit for not being brand.
 
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