I work instocks, and have for about four months. just curious to how other instocks teams operate. my store has for instock team members, we work 7-11:30 on weekdays and 7-12:30 on weekends. we are trained to do all backroom functions because they rely on us a lot. we also have the power to flex items into any location. when we get to work, we usually help out flow team for an hour, then get started on our task list. depending on the day we can only finish our task list and push our pulls. other days we do our list and pulls and then have a few hours so we either help out in backroom, shoot the store at will, or tidy up end/side caps. just curious to see how other teams operate, maybe get a few tips to share to my team.
Archived instocks talk
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SFSFun
Ship from Store: Don't call it Ship To Store!!
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At my store, the BRTMs pull research batches and salesfloor pushes. I've never seen an Instocks TM in the backroom before. Actually now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I have ever seen an Instocks TM anywhere in the store...
This is exactly the reason their CAF pulls are ugly.. "You can't be bothered to push our batches correctly you will keep getting it all day long." Cause when our pulls come back as back stock, backroom will give us a shout on the radio and we have them toss it right back on a CAF pull. Cause they are just as tired of their shit. And only our ETL Ops gets it, when he is LOD, sales floor does not touch our pulls. Cause for some reason sales floor doesn't want to push reshop or clearance.
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You come in at 7, help flow team for an hour and start shooting at 8? What time does your task list drop? Cause if it drops at 6:30 your losing an hour and half of shooting.
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I just started doing in stocks and I hate it! There are 3 of us. We come in at 7 and are responsible for chemicals on truck days. We do our scans and push our pulls if we have time, but BR prepares them for us. We clock out at 11:30 or 12:00 whether we've finished or not.
task list drops at 6:30. we're able to accurately shoot through our list as well. we don't help every day, usually on wednesday when the trucks are larger and sometimes on thursday when the pfresh truck comes in and its large. not every time we help it takes an hour either. its all dependent on how many people are helping and how much there is. on wednesdays we usually have a task list of 350-400 and we can get through that with three people in two or so hours.
luckily i work at a store with great sales and have a little more leeway with payroll, we're allowed to stay longer and get our jobs done.
haha our instocks team is basically a backroom backup... whenever someone calls in they always ask my team to cover it. the last five weeks ive been working two or three ten hour shifts, morning is for instocks, afternoon is for backroom. the backroom and my instocks team works very closely together. its efficient
yeah we do the same at my store, we try and do drastic every other day as well. we do ptm's and we also work clearance pushes as well if we have time.
BoxCutter
Cut hard. Cut deep.
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What is your stores volume? On research days we too have 350-400 tasks in the list, 3 TMs scanning, and scan between 6:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Between the bad zone on the floor, the half-hour Smart Huddle/Zone, and our 15 minute break, we are only getting through about 85% of our tasks. We used to get done 100% when we used the PDAs or LPDAs, but now with the sluggishness of the myDevices, our productivity has really dropped.
Pretty much, we shoot exactly the list on research days. Section 5 of that isle not asked to be scanned, it gets skipped. Then shoot heavy on outs days. It seems to work. But those Outs days - batches be heavy.
We rarely have huddles. I work at a fairly busy store. Large trucks often, double trucks not rare. We work with three people and can work our lists. Especially if we aren't called for back up every five minutes. Last Sunday with the lilly pulitzer launch it was crazy with backup calls lol
We try to shoot outs in certain sections as much as possible. Pets, bedding, furniture toys are big ones always needing to be shot. Plastics are always a bitch to deal with
We are the only team where it is mandatory for us to be there. So we lose at least 45min of scanning time everyday. And we could shoot market and paper/chem/pets all day everyday. But that is not what our STL wants so we have empty shelves but the list is done. More important to save hours than have stuff on the shelf.
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When is management going to understand this correlation? Stuff on the shelves = sales.
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Didn't know there were still some stores that push their batches; do you still work under the old process too, or follow the new one with different focuses each day?
Instocks at our store is probably a bit screwy. Some days the shifts are two people for 8a-12p, others (truck days) they're 10a-2p. We have a core of ~5 TMs but with the exception of one, we're also flow and are scheduled for every truck.. The list-heavy days (Tuesday, Wednesday with 300-400+ lists) we'll get 3-4 people scheduled for ~4 hours. But, there's a catch! Tuesdays (when there's a truck and the list is biggest) we'll get two or three starting at 10a and the last at 11a. Factor in lunches and second breaks, the huddle and any projects and if any of us have are on the reshop schedule and any day we finish the list earlier than "last minute" is a miracle. Plus Wednesdays one of us comes in 2 hours early and works on pushing the PTM batches, leaving 2 hours before the rest of us; they normally don't help with scanning.
Also, endcaps? Ha. Every day the LOD(s) work on front endcaps; we used to do this on endcap days but then were too slow or something. Now we get just the back endcaps and the checklanes! On endcap days if I'm not running behind schedule and my blood pressure isn't too high already, I'll double-check their work. It took a few weeks of bugging my TL but I think they know to do it now? Mostly.
Drastic counts? I've been trying to keep up on them the last few weeks and its becoming more trouble than its worth. I'll try to print it off when it drops but there's barely any time to focus on it; either I leave the other person to do the day's tasks or help them and try to work out nearby items as I go. Though the Wednesday team is awesome because we can take the report, split it into chunks after research is done and make some progress.
tl;dr. Instocks is a mess at my store. I could go on about this forever.
Instocks at our store is probably a bit screwy. Some days the shifts are two people for 8a-12p, others (truck days) they're 10a-2p. We have a core of ~5 TMs but with the exception of one, we're also flow and are scheduled for every truck.. The list-heavy days (Tuesday, Wednesday with 300-400+ lists) we'll get 3-4 people scheduled for ~4 hours. But, there's a catch! Tuesdays (when there's a truck and the list is biggest) we'll get two or three starting at 10a and the last at 11a. Factor in lunches and second breaks, the huddle and any projects and if any of us have are on the reshop schedule and any day we finish the list earlier than "last minute" is a miracle. Plus Wednesdays one of us comes in 2 hours early and works on pushing the PTM batches, leaving 2 hours before the rest of us; they normally don't help with scanning.
Also, endcaps? Ha. Every day the LOD(s) work on front endcaps; we used to do this on endcap days but then were too slow or something. Now we get just the back endcaps and the checklanes! On endcap days if I'm not running behind schedule and my blood pressure isn't too high already, I'll double-check their work. It took a few weeks of bugging my TL but I think they know to do it now? Mostly.
Drastic counts? I've been trying to keep up on them the last few weeks and its becoming more trouble than its worth. I'll try to print it off when it drops but there's barely any time to focus on it; either I leave the other person to do the day's tasks or help them and try to work out nearby items as I go. Though the Wednesday team is awesome because we can take the report, split it into chunks after research is done and make some progress.
tl;dr. Instocks is a mess at my store. I could go on about this forever.
We're all pretty much trained in a lot of stuff so whenever the district comes were made to do a lot of stuff. But it keeps the shift busy and it goes by quickly.
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This is as good a place as any to ask: just how does the drastic count report work? Far as I can tell, items are added if it has multiple locations and one is zeroed out but the rest aren't scanned and updated. Or if it had a single location but instocks reports something way off from system on-hands. Only it seems to care if counts suddenly go down, but not up? I'm trying to figure out how the report cares that some TMNT pillows went from 27 to 0 when a) I can only find 2 on the floor and b) I don't think we ever had 10+ around in the first place and c) if so, why didn't it catch that in the first place? Unless that got removed from the report when I wasn't around; our AP will work on the report too so maybe?
Also, how in-depth do any of you get when working on it? I know the sheet says something about checking the backroom for the product but like anyone has the time for that. If its a large enough item (grills, hot tubs are things I've caught) I'll check the steel but anything else I'm probably going to just count what I see and move on.
Also its funny to me how now that I've tried to keep on top of the report, I'll have instocks coworkers warning me if they changed a lot of counts in an area or put in the wrong number on an item. It almost never shows up on the report but still.
Also, how in-depth do any of you get when working on it? I know the sheet says something about checking the backroom for the product but like anyone has the time for that. If its a large enough item (grills, hot tubs are things I've caught) I'll check the steel but anything else I'm probably going to just count what I see and move on.
Also its funny to me how now that I've tried to keep on top of the report, I'll have instocks coworkers warning me if they changed a lot of counts in an area or put in the wrong number on an item. It almost never shows up on the report but still.
mrknownothing
purveyor of things
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Is it possible to adjust the OH of a discontinued item that the system thinks has sold out? The other day when I was doing the 4x4, I found discontinued items that the MyDevice showed 0 OH. When I went to research those items, the MyDevice wouldn't let me correct the counts.
We usually flex them into locations and try to sell them unless they went salvage.
At my store the drastic is pretty important. It's taken pretty seriously and we do it every other day. We must walk to every location to see if there are the correct count and check the backroom. If we were to slack of like it sounds like your team kind of does, we'd get in a lot of trouble. Basically anything item that says there are some in Stock and we zero out, or correct the count it'll show up on drastic.
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When I started on instocks we had one guy who handled the count report. Then he was taken off instocks during the process change, it was ignored for a few months because nobody else knew how to do it and we had enough to deal with. Then a couple months ago our new AP person started to think it was important again so instocks was encouraged to work on the report again. We made a lot of progress on that, got it from 3 pages to half a page or under. Then for one reason or another the report slipped through the cracks.
AP still wants the report worked on but he's more likely to just do it himself than push for instocks to own it. Leadership (my instocks TL, the LODs) wants us to focus on other things first, then the report. Which I've followed along with but those things almost always take up most the shift. We've got one day out of the week where there's 3 of us and we'll have a good half hour or more left after the task list is done; normally we'll split the list and take care of things; that's been the only day these weeks where it gets actual attention. Every other day there's usually just 2 people and a whole store of tasks (endcaps or a huge list). I used to take a couple other days and just focus on the report for a while before doing whatever the day's main task is. I'd like to get back to that, actually.
Just too much to do and not enough resources to do it it feels like.
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