Archived New Instocks Process Rollout

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
2
Hi, my name is Bam Bam Bigelow and I'm new to this forum. I'm currently an Instocks Captain who is on the bench for a Softlines TeamLead position, so yay me! Anyways, a couple of days ago my ETL showed me an email pertaining to the change in how Instocks metrics are measured, and in fact if I read the email correctly, our metrics are no longer scored based on Scan% with locations and Non-Critical Lows. I don't remember if this is a test or rollout, but we are an A volume store and we don't currently have an ISTL, basically I'm doing the ISTL job, but with TM pay but I do my job well, and although our Flow process is almost hopelessly broken, we have always carried a 12k+ scan team with greens all over the metrics, a vibe score of 97% and are pretty much the topdogs of the store. My question is that my ETL wants our team to scan the entire store for all OUTS, critical and non-critical lows in order to fill the floor based on visual emptiness. The first day we attempted this we absolutely Hurricane Katrina'd the backroom with research batches and it was horribly inefficient to scan the floor. We finished the list nonetheless and the Recovery LOD wanted my head on a platter for what happened earlier in the day. I explained that we were expected to now fill the floor based on lows and outs visually. Now we usually start the day shooting in a wave with the flow team, and I have a RIGs man whose job is to make sure all RIGs are done by the time the store opens. Our problem stems from when to actually start shooting lows and outs from within the task list. We tried to visually shoot within the list and we barely finished the tasklist. We also tried shooting visually when the list is segmented on non-allscan days. The problem is that we are never actually able to fill the salesfloor efficiently without, in my opinion, sucking up a lot of closing labor to push the massive amount of research pulls we create in the morning. Has anyone found a healthy balance to this?
 
Last edited:
You may not want to use your real name.

If your flow process is hopelessly broken, then you are going to have large research pulls. Flow has to get better for you to have less work. I don't exactly know what you mean by visually shooting, but if you are scanning things to fill the floor to capacity even if all the facings are filled (even if those facings are only 1 deep) then you are really doing unnecessary work. I'm not sure how long you've been with the company, but if you remember the horror that was the summer 2010 software rollout...that's when things got really messed up as far as instocks goes. When target decided that casepack logic was the way to go (which isn't a bad idea, but had terrible implementation), added in counting when backstocking, and changed trigger levels to match up with casepacks they said over and over that the floor will look lighter than it had normally been. As long as all facings are filled, the floor is considered full. We were also not to spend time purging the stockroom because it is inefficient for filling out of stocks since you end up spending time stocking stuff that is considered instock already and updating locations. You also aren't usually subtracting from backroom locations, so the accumulator is negatively affected.

Basically, to make your workload more manageable you should only be shooting outs and critical lows in the task list. You'll still have big pulls. Depending on how many people you have on your team, you might consider having a tm come in at 8 to start pushing pulls. Or have the RIGs guy start pushing the batches around 8. I'd have your best/fastest scanner (or two scanners) scan from 630 until you finish the list on segmented days and then start pushing pulls afterwards. The RIGs tm or whoever came in later should already have a head start on the batches. This really seems the most efficient to me since your work is being pushed as it gets pulled instead of piling up until 11.
 
The change your referring to is the "Scans w/ locations" for the replenishment score will no longer apply. The score will still be there but will not count towards anything. Obviously if its red they will still be yelling at someone about it. Replenishment score will only be overall graded on 1 thing and that's caf pull timeliness. This change doesn't take effect till next year is what I am being told, so for now the process is still the same.

Sigma is correct if your flow process is broken then instocks is screwed because they pay the price for it.
 
Non-Critical Lows were never a part of the metric. You need to follow the task list to scan the store and use SAR on the rough areas. Don't use SAR outside of the task list to try to fill the entire floor everyday, you're going to kill yourself. The whole idea behind returning to the segmented research is to increase the QUALITY of your scans. Quantity of scans means nothing! You should actually be shooting for a smaller number of scans and a complete task list. A smaller number of scans means that there are less outs to scan on the floor. If you have a million outs to scan and it's creating large batches you're not doing your job. When your DTL walks your store and you're full with 1500 scans a week, it's time to celebrate! Less time scanning = more time digging into your In Stocks opps to stay full. Don't blame the flow team, if they are not doing their job you have no one to blame but yourself for not pointing it out to them.
 
Welcome to The Break Room.
I would certainly edit you RL name.
Since this isn't an official board we often discuss things that make Spot unhappy which is why we all try to fly anonymous.
Just want you to be safe from harassment.
 
According to the email I was given, the change was effective October 31, and the replenishment scores were retroactive to the beginning of FY 2013.
 
According to the email I was given, the change was effective October 31, and the replenishment scores were retroactive to the beginning of FY 2013.

Yea my ETL read the email and was telling me about it. He hardly ever reads his email, not to mention he's pretty scatter brained, so he more then likely misunderstood. He forwarded me a copy and was telling me about it as I was leaving so I haven't seen it yet.
 
Oh and on a side note....Way to go on making it to the bench! Remember, you're not here to prove yourself to us so I gotta say...........
If your dayside team is still pushing your research batches at closing time that means your floor is looking like Swiss cheese allllll dayyyyyyyyyy. I highly doubt that your vibe scores are sitting at 97%. Turn that 9 upside down and try again my friend.
 
My vibe score for my work center is indeed 97%, the only reason I say the flow process is hopelessly broken is because they've decided to mutiny against the ETL. Lazy people being lazy and couldn't finish a 1300 piece truck. That's what holds us back, don't get me wrong we have a great instocks and SF team that is constantly picking up the slack. it is a little different at our store/district. Our DTL is very numbers driven and cares deeply for quantity of scans but now wants to see less "Swiss cheese" on the SF.

i posted because I thought maybe this was a global instocks change and I see that it is not, I'll get more info today at work and maybe this is a test to be implemented later. I was told these things are to be our goals going forward by the DTL through my ETL:

1: non-critical lows and scans with locations no longer matter.
2: visually make note of areas of the store with product that has or will soon have critical lows and shoot those areas in SAR.
3: check monthly sales reports and scan areas visually and all-scan the top 3 and bottom 3 departments of the store based on maturity in sales.
4: all scan everyday, no exceptions
5: RIGS RCs PTM Drastics finished everyday.

We have a 3 man instocks team, I make the schedule and I don't have the manpower to do everything on this list. 4 of the 5 is doable but I'd need another 10 hours of labor to do the extra step. Figured I'd ask to see how you guys run things, I clearly see that what we are doing is probably a test of a new process. I'll find out more info like I said.

And thank you all for the advice! I'll use bits and pieces to come up with a new process.
 
My vibe score for my work center is indeed 97%, the only reason I say the flow process is hopelessly broken is because they've decided to mutiny against the ETL. Lazy people being lazy and couldn't finish a 1300 piece truck. That's what holds us back, don't get me wrong we have a great instocks and SF team that is constantly picking up the slack. it is a little different at our store/district. Our DTL is very numbers driven and cares deeply for quantity of scans but now wants to see less "Swiss cheese" on the SF.

i posted because I thought maybe this was a global instocks change and I see that it is not, I'll get more info today at work and maybe this is a test to be implemented later. I was told these things are to be our goals going forward by the DTL through my ETL:

1: non-critical lows and scans with locations no longer matter.
2: visually make note of areas of the store with product that has or will soon have critical lows and shoot those areas in SAR.
3: check monthly sales reports and scan areas visually and all-scan the top 3 and bottom 3 departments of the store based on maturity in sales.
4: all scan everyday, no exceptions
5: RIGS RCs PTM Drastics finished everyday.

We have a 3 man instocks team, I make the schedule and I don't have the manpower to do everything on this list. 4 of the 5 is doable but I'd need another 10 hours of labor to do the extra step. Figured I'd ask to see how you guys run things, I clearly see that what we are doing is probably a test of a new process. I'll find out more info like I said.

And thank you all for the advice! I'll use bits and pieces to come up with a new process.

I'm not sure if it has reached our store yet but our process has simply been to only scan rigs on truck days and on two days out of the week, non truck, we would scan everything. Critical lows, grey dots and rigs. Drastics and ptm are done everyday but on occasion the monday workload for ptms are huge. I'm not sure if other stores do it or not but after resetting an area the plano team are supposed to scan their outs with sar. It'll be nice for the scans with locs deal not to hit us.
 
Apparently we are getting a "new" instock process at the end of the month. Any insight? I'm guessing it's what has been referred to above. That should be very interesting with the awesome IS scheduling we've been seeing from mytime.
 
We've been only told that we need to scan something every 15 seconds and that we're coming coming in earlier before the list drops (5am). I tried to get more info and was told because everyone else is doing it!
 
We just flipped over to completely ignoring the task list and scanning in stand alone research every day... I'm not entirely sure why.
 
We've been only told that we need to scan something every 15 seconds and that we're coming coming in earlier before the list drops (5am). I tried to get more info and was told because everyone else is doing it!

No not everyone is doing it that way.
 
We just flipped over to completely ignoring the task list and scanning in stand alone research every day... I'm not entirely sure why.
This is what we've been doing, too. It's a freaking nightmare due to multiple locations. PLUS they are having us scan MPG aisles. Just wondering what the real scoop is because I feel like they are making it all up as they go since I have seen no consistency and no "official" word of anything.
 
We just flipped over to completely ignoring the task list and scanning in stand alone research every day... I'm not entirely sure why.
This is what we've been doing, too. It's a freaking nightmare due to multiple locations. PLUS they are having us scan MPG aisles. Just wondering what the real scoop is because I feel like they are making it all up as they go since I have seen no consistency and no "official" word of anything.

We scan PTM isles if they drop in the list, less crap to flex when we get around to dropping the batches. If the product is replace we cover that label and scan what is next to it, stuff in the back? Yes? pull it and put it out. No? Move along. Takes a bit to know how to do it right but it keeps things full when it's done right.
 
MPG aisles shouldn't be dropping into your task list. My point is that every store has developed their own process which makes all of those reports and rankings invalid. There is no criteria. I guess it doesn't really matter much if the floor is getting filled.... until they start to use them against tl's and tm's at review time.
 
MPG aisles shouldn't be dropping into your task list. My point is that every store has developed their own process which makes all of those reports and rankings invalid. There is no criteria. I guess it doesn't really matter much if the floor is getting filled.... until they start to use them against tl's and tm's at review time.

They can as just end caps, but it should allow you to scan the isle for a bit. And with how the revision process has changed stuff can go replace long before the isle goes PTM. And always document your back up when you are pushed into a bullshit process for review time. I feel lucky listening to you guys, we pretty much get left alone to scan, our store feels In-stocks is a black art that only a few know. But our downside is since they don't understand it we have to clean up after everyone else and their broken process cause "they are good so they have the time to clean up after everyone".

Take that to read our TL scores well on the yearly survey but everyone else gets blasted..
 
MPG aisles shouldn't be dropping into your task list. My point is that every store has developed their own process which makes all of those reports and rankings invalid. There is no criteria. I guess it doesn't really matter much if the floor is getting filled.... until they start to use them against tl's and tm's at review time.

They can as just end caps, but it should allow you to scan the isle for a bit. And with how the revision process has changed stuff can go replace long before the isle goes PTM. And always document your back up when you are pushed into a bullshit process for review time. I feel lucky listening to you guys, we pretty much get left alone to scan, our store feels In-stocks is a black art that only a few know. But our downside is since they don't understand it we have to clean up after everyone else and their broken process cause "they are good so they have the time to clean up after everyone".
Yeah - we scan the aisles when just a portion or the ec shows up in the list, too. Non-mpg aisles have been showing up in my ptm task list with the revision process changes. We try to have the team use those as smart huddle projects. So funny about the "black art". We are pretty much avoided by everyone because they fear us and our knowledge of all processes. We are the first "go to" when there are any questions of "how do I....?", though. I don't think most of our ETL's even know what we do or what we know or why we know it or how we know it or who we are.... lol
 
MPG aisles shouldn't be dropping into your task list. My point is that every store has developed their own process which makes all of those reports and rankings invalid. There is no criteria. I guess it doesn't really matter much if the floor is getting filled.... until they start to use them against tl's and tm's at review time.

They can as just end caps, but it should allow you to scan the isle for a bit. And with how the revision process has changed stuff can go replace long before the isle goes PTM. And always document your back up when you are pushed into a bullshit process for review time. I feel lucky listening to you guys, we pretty much get left alone to scan, our store feels In-stocks is a black art that only a few know. But our downside is since they don't understand it we have to clean up after everyone else and their broken process cause "they are good so they have the time to clean up after everyone".
Yeah - we scan the aisles when just a portion or the ec shows up in the list, too. Non-mpg aisles have been showing up in my ptm task list with the revision process changes. We try to have the team use those as smart huddle projects. So funny about the "black art". We are pretty much avoided by everyone because they fear us and our knowledge of all processes. We are the first "go to" when there are any questions of "how do I....?", though. I don't think most of our ETL's even know what we do or what we know or why we know it or how we know it or who we are.... lol

I take a bit of sadistic pleasure in the headaches I cause ETL's when I stand my ground on our process.
 
Apparently we are getting a "new" instock process at the end of the month. Any insight? I'm guessing it's what has been referred to above. That should be very interesting with the awesome IS scheduling we've been seeing from mytime.

We've been testing this at my store for about three weeks. Way it works is we will shoot RIGs daily (no more than 25 RIG tasks each day). The new process is more focused on 4x4 zone walks of all the aisles (ensuring good zone, label maintenance, brand, etc). You would do 4x4 walks on non-scan days (there is a schedule for which department gets walked each day). Research in full is split up into two all-store scan days. Tuesday is Grocery/Softlines and Wednesday is the rest of Hardlines. The rest of the week (including Saturday/Sunday) you will do just 4x4 walks and PTM tasks. The overnight flow team will shoot and push OUTS batches on non-scan days.

It will depend on how your store leadership wants to work the 4x4 walks in deciding who does them. In our store, my Instocks team is super-detailed and our STL decided to use them for the 4x4. Other stores it depends. The test has been mildly successful over the past few weeks... definitely been some bumps in the road but hopefully it will come together in the end.
 
I've heard that MPG labels, etc. may be going away in light of doing more SPTM.
True or not?
 
I've heard that MPG labels, etc. may be going away in light of doing more SPTM.
True or not?

Don't know but with our roll out of My Time our hours were slashed so we aren't touching it anymore. Can't do much when you are working 4hrs a day.

But we do lots of stand alone PTM to keep stuff full.
 
After doing the new rollout process for a few weeks now, I'd say it does work a bit better than before. I'm in a now-C-volume store where there are only 2 tm's doing OUTS and RIGS on non-scan days, and the workload is barely manageable. On non-scan days, our OUTS include softlines basics and shoes--shoes is sometimes hard to do because of the lack of zoning (it only gets superzoned Monday nights for softlines research the next day). The hardest part is doing the drastic report the day after the full scan day in hardlines on Wednesdays. My instocks team lead likes it cleared every single day, so every Thursday, counts are usually just fixed to the original ones, and if there's time we'll try to look for some of the stuff that's missing and checkmark them off the list.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top