I am seriously at my wit's end with this. I am constantly told to go faster and I have no idea how I can. Obviously, they want me to keep the U-boat with me at all times, which I do, but that can actually slow me down in some circumstances. Sure, it works well and makes sense if it is sorted correctly, but in certain instances, it does not seem logical to me (for example; it is much faster to walk to an aisle with one box than bring the whole U-boat with me for a single box). There are many issues I have with certain approaches to this and it's hard for me to believe other people are going a lot faster than me, but maybe they are. Any tips for making a faster push?
Archived Pushing faster
- Thread starter sfslackey
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Welcome to the timers on uboats. Aka store modernization. You have 60 seconds to do 1 box.
Your point makes total sense. Our store doesn’t reinforce on taking uboat with us although they might tell that on a day there is a visit. If your u boat is sorted horribly, then tell them that’s the reason your work is getting delayed . Show them proof. ( nothing might change though). Or you can first push all boxes in your aisle. Keep aside those which goes in the next. Once u r done with first one you can take your uboat with you to next. I always do ~200 boxes on average daily which includes zoning 5-6 aisles , filling end caps , back stock.
At the end of the day if I couldn’t finish my truck, well , it is what it is. But make sure to do your max and keep your aisles clean. That is surely noted.
At the end of the day if I couldn’t finish my truck, well , it is what it is. But make sure to do your max and keep your aisles clean. That is surely noted.
That was specifically what my current TL told me, that the DTL had made several complaints about that, but I'm not sure if they were there today, I certainly didn't see them. I do try to do the boxes for the closest aisle first but it gets difficult sometimes and I don't blame the people doing inbound for the sorting issue. At least at my store, say boxes labeled 71 are the aisles in kitchen from 1 to 15. So they are all mixed up on the u-boat and even an aisle off is farther than I should be from it, but say some of the boxes for aisle 1-2 are buried under a wide assortment of boxes for other aisles and the u-boat is already full. I don't have anywhere to set aside boxes for later aisles and I'm not going to start just putting boxes on the floor because, like you said, I need to stay clean too, then backstock can get in the way. This is mostly just a pet peeve of mine... mostly.
Yeah I know how hard it could get. We can’t really blame the guys who does unloading because they get only few hours to do their stuff and then curse everyone on their way out of the store before the etl warm them about compliance.
Our DTL was not happy with the way the back room aisles were looking. But we are getting overstock of things and are struggling to find space. Still our DTL wants to cleanup back room aisles before next visit. They even took pics for reference!! So apart from all the stuffs , we started to cleanup the back room aisles one section a day since last week.
Our DTL was not happy with the way the back room aisles were looking. But we are getting overstock of things and are struggling to find space. Still our DTL wants to cleanup back room aisles before next visit. They even took pics for reference!! So apart from all the stuffs , we started to cleanup the back room aisles one section a day since last week.
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Sorting is bad from dc’s
TTGOz
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Ditch the u-boat to bring outliers to different aisles. The only reason why any store would want that is for security reasons, but in my three years of experience I've never had anyone cut open a full case, dig something out, and then run.
Some things I did to adapt pushing aisles faster; stacking boxes that go in the same general area. You don't want to stack too many other-wise complaints will ensue. Every time I had to stock Shredded Cheese I'd do 5-6 boxes and get it all out in two minutes, and then rinse and repeat with another 5-6 boxes.
I had the opportunity to stack uboats exactly the way I liked them since in Frozen Dairy we've been breaking down pallets ourselves and pulling our own pulls and everything. I would stack boxes according to where they went in the aisle. For example; Creamers were at the very beginning, stack creamers on top. Cheese/sour cream was in the middle of the aisle, yogurt third, butter/string cheeses/farther away yogurts and endcaps all went on last.
just some personal tips. I no longer work for Target but I am hoping to bring my skills learned from Target into my new job at Costco. Just have to find a routine and make it work. It also helps my leadership didn't make us drag uboats with us literally everywhere. If we had outliers we could certainly leave the uboat for a second.
edit: I know this is obvious as hell but working faster helps too. My struggle with working faster was finding routine and working fast to the benefit of everyone so I wasn't being sloppy, knocking boxes over, leaving things everywhere, that kind of thing.
Some things I did to adapt pushing aisles faster; stacking boxes that go in the same general area. You don't want to stack too many other-wise complaints will ensue. Every time I had to stock Shredded Cheese I'd do 5-6 boxes and get it all out in two minutes, and then rinse and repeat with another 5-6 boxes.
I had the opportunity to stack uboats exactly the way I liked them since in Frozen Dairy we've been breaking down pallets ourselves and pulling our own pulls and everything. I would stack boxes according to where they went in the aisle. For example; Creamers were at the very beginning, stack creamers on top. Cheese/sour cream was in the middle of the aisle, yogurt third, butter/string cheeses/farther away yogurts and endcaps all went on last.
just some personal tips. I no longer work for Target but I am hoping to bring my skills learned from Target into my new job at Costco. Just have to find a routine and make it work. It also helps my leadership didn't make us drag uboats with us literally everywhere. If we had outliers we could certainly leave the uboat for a second.
edit: I know this is obvious as hell but working faster helps too. My struggle with working faster was finding routine and working fast to the benefit of everyone so I wasn't being sloppy, knocking boxes over, leaving things everywhere, that kind of thing.
This is crazy with home decor.... candles, lamps, furniture, mirrors, artwork, frames .... boxes inside of a box that is glued shut with taped styrofoam over taped plastic bags inside .... The whole uboat thing has been a nightmare. The cardboard doesn't stay and there's so much styrofoam that taking the uboat with is impossible. It's getting really old really fast.
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Interpacks, spider wrap & keepers slow you down.
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What I do is work one lane and stock that whole area. If there are any other cases that go on other lanes I put them in a section on the uboat and than go to those sections accordingly.
You hit a nerve here and I could go on and on about this. Open a box and there are 3 or 4 boxes inside; open that box and there are individually wrapped items (plastic wrap), little pieces of paper separating each item, Styrofoam stuck all over the item and inside the box, tape all over the item; tiny pieces of useless loose cardboard that evidently make a mess and (for me) nowhere to put most of it (we haven't even had trash bags recently). It actually pisses me off how some of these boxes's are packaged, it seem so overly wasteful. I've pushed some similar products that create very little trash and the packaging is extremely simple, with no problems in the final product.
This is the ideal situation of course and is what I try to do, but if boxes that go in my current lane are stacked under 3 layers of boxes from far off lanes, what do I do? This works extremely well in something like chemicals, but not somewhere like toys (at my store). I have nowhere on my Uboat to move the boxes in the beginning of the push, because it is stacked so high. I have to move on and come back to the same position at some point, perhaps several times, which seems extremely inefficient. It can also get so confusing sometimes, especially when you only have one, huge Uboat, you have determined a good amount of backstock (but have nowhere to put it but the same uboat) plus boxes for other aisles all around. I would like just be moving boxes to the floor or shelf for a few seconds to get to the relevant boxes but that is frowned upon, I'm sure. I wish I could actually have a separate place to put backstock, but often I don't and I have little time to retrieve a vehicle for it.
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I wish the u boat didn’t exist at all. They aren’t very practicals safe, or stable, and a few time mine have come close to tipping over. One has tipped over luckily it was in the back room. I got hung up on another and it started to tip. It was like a domino effect causing the u boat next to it to start fall. I caught both but the boxes fell off. They are being stacked too high and I can’t see where I’m steering and I’m afraid I might hit a guest, since they see you coming and walk directly in your way, or loose boxes in the way. There’s no room for back stock or like said above your running back and forth from aisle to aisle. Then there’s no u boats allowed in the back room to back stock and you have to offset your load to another vehicle. Our backroom isn't set up with open bays. Ours are set on rollers and you have to wait until others are done with their back stock or pulls before you can do yours. Also when pulling once you take the stock to the floor you see the home is already full and the quantities are way off. I fix them but then once you back stock the overstock the qualities are still off. I pulled the same blankets for the past 3 shifts.
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Fix the quantities after backstocking to fix the problem.
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Right, pogdog, I resort fast, I have to push u-boats and flats but if I sort it goes a lot faster and with the u-boat cardboard I grab a big box first that I can push then I shove smaller ones inside it , because the u-boat is not designed to handle a lot of cardboard, I just load the bigger boxes up, dump small ones in it and try to hit the bailer at the best time , and dump it all at once, might have to make a bale here and there but it works for me. I would rather do a 5 min bale than wait 15 mins in line waitng
Getting a big box to put cut up boxes in is ideal. Then you can just throw it in the bailer and be done with it quickly. It could literally take 5 to 30 seconds to get rid of cardboard and trash if you get lucky... but it doesn't always work out that way. Cutting up the boxes also seems to slow me down too much. Guess I'm just not that good at it in comparison to some people.
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