Archived Outbound Tracking (Winter PDA update)

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Unreturnable

Receiving/Reverse Logistics
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Dec 20, 2012
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Has anyone else had the dubious honor of working with the Winter '14 PDA update? I'm not sure if it's a company-wide rollout yet, but my store now has Outbound Tracking as an app to do all manner of tasks. All things ESIM, Salvage, CRC, Donation, and pallet-tracking-related are now bound up in this app. As a result, Price Change is now responsible for having each team member "track" their own salvage onto the pallet and scan it in, Guest Service sends their CRC/Salvage back and the Receiving TM is responsible to somehow figure out what it is and scan it in the next day, and apparently we've doubled or tripled the bills of lading sent out on sweeps.

So as the Receiving/Reverse Logistics TM who sees this the most, it's been pretty challenging so far. I don't know why, but I was the only one in the entire store to read the memo on this thing so I had the honor of informing everyone from my ETL to the Price Change TL to the front end, and everyone was just horribly confused and unhappy about the change. An entire week of Price Change salvage slid without being scanned into the pallets that I kept sending out, and the opening GSTL has no idea if the closing GSTL actually sent their CRC/salvage back or just closed it out in the POS system and lost it.

If anyone is ahead of me on this, or figures this out in the future, I had some questions regarding the new system. Also, be aware that I took over a poorly run receiving dock, so I'm just learning some things we were supposed to do but weren't doing; I'm not sure if any of this is old and I'm just catching up or if it's brand new stuff with the update.

-Does Price Change or Reverse Logistics track non-salvage donations at all? Obviously the Price Change salvage is in the batch they scan into the pallet; the ESIM donations are scanned into my ESIM donation bin, the Pet Food/Non-Food have new bins and labels that those get scanned into. I frequently have other miscellaneous donation that I send out on our salvage pallet, I've just been scanning it straight into the pallet myself but I'm not sure how this affects Price Change - maybe they add those items to their individual batches as they work during the day?

-Also, do we "track" food donation at all? I haven't found anything detailing how to set up that area, I've just been storing our dry grocery donations in food-ready boxes until our weekly pickup, but sometimes Price Change brings back food donation salvage and they've been asking if it needs to be scanned in or not. I haven't had a pickup for food or pet food donation yet, curious to see if we generate an electronic bill of lading for that now...

Anyone else having fun with this update yet? Any other info I missed?
 
Our district was set to start this pilot as well, last minute our district was removed from the pilot.
 
From what our reverse logistics TM said food donations don't have to be "tracked", but we're going to track ours anyway for uniformity throughout the whole process. Because you know I didn't have enough to do in my 4 or 5 hour shift already including unloading, pushing and backstocking the food truck, doing the BR suspect date audit, cleaning up the flats and pallets from the truck, and any other random task that comes up, I now have to allot 30-45 minutes to scan our donations into a bin when as you said the old process of counting and boxing them took maybe 10.
 
Unreturnable, I am sorry. :( I too am in the same situation you are in. Well, I am going to be. I received paperwork from my ETL-LOG about the new process and I was so lost. Batches being created from Guest Service makes me a bit weary...

Reading through the VERY vague packet I got makes me think that scanning items to the pallet ID would be easier after I built the pallet not AS the pallet is being built though out the week. I did read that items can be removed from the pallet ID as needed. Not really interested in an extra step though. I myself would rather build my own pallet and not have all kinds of TM's scanning items into a pallet ID. If I am to own this new process then I would like it to be correct and not all haphazard.

As for the food donations, from what I understand each bin is to have it's own label, which is crap in my opinion because as Dragonwing mentioned, what took a matter of minutes will now take an hour (depending on the truck damage and PC salvage). We are supposed to use a cart (I'm going to see about using a silver side) and have the ESIM donation bin on the bottom with all the food donations placed above.

There are also new changes to the way ESIM items are processed. Some new questions will be asked and certain #1 or #2 stickers will print out to let you know if the item is to be placed on the salvage pallet, the CRC pallet if the item requires special handling (nail polish, hair spray, lotion, etc.), or an ESIM bin.

As for the BOL's, I too did read that we have to do separate BOL's with this new process. The poor driver will have not only an empty/full trailer to haul back to the DC but also a pile a paper sitting next to them.

Subt will now be an APP as well as SCNT (BOO........o_O). If and when QMOS goes away that will be a sad day indeed...

I used to be a Specialist and have been in this position over 10 years. I have seen some things removed that I was happy about and some things added that still make me want to pull out my hair. This new process is going to make me bald...

As a btw, did any of you receivers/reverse logistics read the message board about what to send and what not to send invoice wise to HQ? Not very clear.
 
I will say I saw SUBT as an App and the first thing I did was check - it had NOT been removed from RF Apps, still works fine there, they just added a fancy, colorful Web App version of it too. I'm sure some day they'll phase out RF Apps completely and we'll be stuck using the new Subt, but for now don't worry.

Dragonwing - Lemme know how tracking food donations goes for you, and if you figure out a streamlined way to do it. I'm not looking forward to it at all, but I'm too far behind on other things to have that be a priority at the moment.

PureZero - If you're talking about the invoice message board posted right at the end of this week, I had to read it a few times. As I understand it we definitely still send in alcohol invoices, but it looks like to a new intra-company mail address. Main thing I took from it is we definitely DON'T send anymore DSD invoices - the smaller orders we scan in piece-by-piece, I was trained to bundle those invoices at the end of every day and mail them in with the next outgoing company mail. I believe now we just hold onto those for 90 days, I was intending to file them with the daily package check-in packing lists and just roll all of them through my 30-, 60-, and 90-day folders.

There was something about sending in produce/fresh food vendor invoices, I don't have any of those; we'll be Target food DC soon, and the message board specifically said don't send anything from the DC paperwork or any BOLs in, if I remember right, so as I take it I won't have to mail anything in except alcohol invoices now. One thing I was wondering about was credits, but that's a BOL so I guess we won't mail those either.

As far as Outbound Tracking...I'll try to be brief with this, because I'm pissed about it and Outbound Tracking seems to suck.

I agree, the info they gave us was SUPER vague. Some things it didn't mention that I learned: Price Change TMs generate their "batch" as they work on the floor, when they go to add it to the pallet the way to tell which batch is which is by the employee number under each batch. To add it to the pallet you have to double-tap the batch on the screen (same with you adding the Guest Service batches that you're now responsible for), that one took me a little while to figure out. If you wanted to you could probably work with the front end and Price Change and just build the pallet and add all the batches in yourself, it would just be a little extra work on your end to make sure everything was brought back on a regular basis, otherwise it's hard to tell which stuff came from which batch in the gun. Of course it sucks when someone comes back after you're gone for the day and they scan ten boxes into a salvage pallet, with the last three or four boxes being to much to fit so they just leave them on the floor nearby.

As far as all this Outbound Apps tracking in general...man, I'm new to this position - like I was a backup for six months, full-time now for maybe two months, but I used to be able to rush through clearing out the defects and boxing up donations. Now I have to defect everything, put it into different piles, toggle over to Outbound and slowly scan everything in piece-by-piece, with more button-mashing to go from Salvage to CRC to Pet, etc...so far it's a nightmare, I'm jealous that Guest Service and Price Change can automatically generate a nifty little "batch" to scan in with one go. I feel like Reverse Logistics wound up getting the rough end of the stick on this one, as if it wasn't bad enough our job is to come in and process all the garbage that people have piled up for us overnight.

If you happen to figure out the food donation process would you mind posting something, even if just where that info is located? I didn't see anything in the message boards and I've been searching through the best practice info online with no luck so far. Thanks for your info, and sorry you're about to experience this unpleasant mess as well. Maybe we'll all be surprised and it will turn out fine, but until then this is looking like a bumpy road.
 
Unreturnable, as in DSD, would you say they are referring to the packages we get from UPS/FEDEX or the vendors that we check in like Pepperidge Farm? I haven't ever sent UPS/FEDEX invoices to TNC, so I related DSD to vendor check-ins. The message board asked to only mail non-ADSD beverage invoices and liquor invoices, so to me that means only liquor, beer, Red Bull and Seven-up are to be sent out.
:confused:
Thanks for your help with trying to get this all figured out! :D
 
I must have missed the beverage part, I'll have to go read that message again on Monday. If it did specify beverage then you'd be right, just the beer/wine and Red Bull, 7-Up...we get Snapple too, is all I can think of.

I didn't mean to lump Fedex and Pepperidge together, as far as I know Fedex/etc. would be "small package carriers" via Target definition, and no I've never sent those in either, just the Direct-Store-Deliveries like Pepperidge. I'll double-check my messages next time I'm in and run it by my trainer the next store over. Nothing really surprises me at Target anymore, they could ask us to send in only invoices on odd-numbered days every third month and I'd go with it.
 
Ok. So today I got to use the 'scan the item onto the pallet ID' thing, bleh... Did NOT enjoy scanning a jewelry salvage MIR into that.

I was reading how to remove items from a pallet ID but don't understand where I can remove a scanned pallet ID. I read the instructions on how to do that but didn't see it as a choice on the PDA. Is it a choice when I go to the eBOL to ship? Also, is there anywhere I can look up what is included in a batch or what has been scanned into a pallet? For example, when I got in this morning there where two batches from GS. If these batches were too big to fit all on one pallet and I needed/wanted to separate them, how do I know what items go with which batch? I wouldn't think that we can mix-up the batches on different pallets, or can we? I already know that we can't separate MIR boxes. PC scans their own batches to the pallets, they are an awesome team so I don't have worries about them.

I really, REALLY don't like scanning food donations. This new process eats away at my time to do other tasks. Don't see where the productivity factor is in this. :mad:
 
I'm still trying to figure out the food donation thing. I mean if it's a donation, it's a donation. When you defect the item out, it's a "toss". So why do they need to track that exactly??!! Mind you, i'm still trying to read up more on it, but aside from bringing the paperwork home and "working of the clock" I can't delve that deep into the subject.

CRC I scanned onto the pallet ID today. I put a checkmark on to the ones I did to make sure I didn't scan the same things to the pallet accidentally, because it looks like you can scan the same items onto it and thus making duplicates?? I'm not sure.

Edit: I mean the salvage. CRC all have defective stickers, so no problem with duplicates.

Salvage is on Pricing and Guest Service to scan these items to the pallet ID. I have some salvage, but it's mostly on them. I'll just make sure the boxes are sealed and send it out.

Tomorrow i'll do the send pallet or whatever it's called and see if I did everything correctly. Extra BOLs?! I can barely fit the paperwork in the slot for pickup as it is. Might need to call an LOD to open the box outside.

I don't profess to know everything about this. Please, if anyone had done this, please chime in. This has been on my mind all week.
 
FivemagicS, I like your idea of marking the boxes that have been scanned into the pallets. Having anyone from GS scan something onto a pallet would be an impossible task at the store I'm at. Can't imagine the mess I'm going to walk into on Monday.

As for the BOL's. I shipped out my first pallet and created a BOL from the computer. Nearly the same information you would have entered when you used to use the SHIP function on the PDA is what you would enter on the computer. I found out from there that is where a pallet can be removed if needed. After everything is entered it will ask you to print out 3 BOL's, since the driver takes two and we don't send them to HQ anymore the other one I just filed with the rest.

Extra BOLs?! I can barely fit the paperwork in the slot for pickup as it is. Might need to call an LOD to open the box outside.
You're right on the money with that comment! So now we have 3 sweep BOL's, 3 of these new eBOL's and then every few months add in 3 M&M CRC BOL's. What a HUGE waste of paper... Hope the driver signs them all and knows which ones to take.
 
Scanning the the food and non food donation as I'm putting in the box that gets pick up by the food bank Mon-Fri is NON PRODUCTIVE. Can you imagine the food we have to scan from Freshness Friday. What about all the out of date we find during resets. Non food donations from GS I would give that to the Food Bank that moring when they come for the pickup but now I have to scan it into the donation box then acknowleged the pickup.
 
I spent waaay to much time processsing damaged mdse and the outbound tracking (donations & fitting room defects) today. Usually on Monday I can finish 6 1/2 or 7 hrs. There for almost 8hrs. There are some things I do that is not part of Rec/Rev log but I always have time on Monday do those tasks NOT today.
 
The whole thing about guest service actually scanning their stuff onto the pallet came up today. They have batches, and if I scan everything onto the pallet ID, then the batches remain. So it is CRUCIAL that they scan the batches onto the pallet ID. I COULD do it I suppose, but if a shortage came up, I could be the one responsible (I'm not sure how batches work). In hind sight, that was how it was before, me being responsible.

But this whole thing is a learning experience, and as long as communication is happening on all fronts, problems should be kept to a minimum.

I'm gonna see about them putting their initials on the scanned in boxes, That way I can keep an eye on it everyday.

And about helping other team members out, everyone I work with know that I have a responsibility for my job. After that I'll help them. We knew this would be more painstaking for everyone, now we need to find that balance.

On the plus side, done with all my MIRs this week. Should be cake now!!
 
So I've been living with this roll-out for a while, and nothing has been perfect as but I'm working on making it functional. Things I've gotten down are:

-Check with Guest Service that they do indeed check out and then deliver their CRC/Salvage to the back each night. Then I see it's in the gun and scan it in to the pallet. Easy.
-Check with Price Change if their batches are loading up; they need to get their TMs to scan their own items in.
-My own Reverse Logistics CRC/Salvage, I just make a box for each and fill them up as I make defects. Once I get a full box I dump it and scan it all in to the pallet label to make sure all my stuff is tracked. Would be nice if we had "batches" in the back like they do elsewhere; It sucks to defect out 100 things, then scan in 100 things...can't we just defect it out, then have a batch??
-Leave on the weekend, and something crazy happens and I come in with an over-full salvage pallet, and another huge pile of stuff on the floor next to it. If it was all "tracked" to the one Salvage label hanging over the one pallet, what now?
-Also, leaving for the weekend and someone knocks down the label hanging over the Salvage or CRC pallet. I use the super heavy-duty clear plastic holders, but they still get knocked-down, broken, and lost. Come in after a weekend and everything was scanned into a label that got knocked down and then thrown out? Siiiiiiigh.

Those are my pains, was just curious - I haven't been able to find/been given info on tracking to food donation. Pet food/non-food was easy, they linked us that, but my store has never tracked food donation and I've been told we need to start but can't find the info. Anyone have a lead on that?
 
You see, with that whole weekend over (stuff) of the pallet, i'm gonna treat it all as the same pallet, or shipment. I haven't encountered it yet, but that is how I would handle it. As long as it's tracked, no problem. right?

I had to do the whole batch process once, and that was from the weekend. No problems yet, we'll see a couple months down the road. lol
 
So, an update on Outbound Tracking:

I have no detailed info yet, but my store was one of the first to get the software update. We had a corporate visit a month or so into the new program, and as they were passing by one of the people from corporate chatted with me for about a minute. I had the opportunity to glean this info: Outbound Tracking is just the beginning. There will be more tracking, and more detailed tracking. I don't know what the details are by any means, just the term "this is just the beginning" was definitely used, and "much more detailed and thorough" was thrown out as well, all in relation to the receiving/reverse logistics area. So yaaaaay...or something.

I do know from a recent message board update that more info about which batch came from who/where, and which box it is in will be more readily available (such as, able to check if a Guest Services box is actually on your pallet before you add it, or check which item on the pallet came from where), more details still to come!
 
I agree it sucks! Vague communication and no ETLs with a clue and I was on vacation when it rolled out. I look forward to others ideas and advice. What we did is we write the batch number on the box and then say Box 1 of 2 or 1 of 2 of 3 whatever so that we know which one it is and then we select that batch from the pda on to the pallet put a red X in our initials and the date... This way I can look at the pallet and know if an item or box has been added.

Seriously though the whole roll out has just been ridiculous.
 
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