Archived Reaching out to all seasoned BRTM's

[Alex123]

Any bright ideas on how to reduce huge morning autofills?

What about this idea: One guy comes at night and sets up the line for the next morning, and pulls manuals for every custom block(and stages them on the line) Flow team comes in the next morning and pushes those manuals while the truck begins the unload and the backroom team comes in to a less than 1 hour autofill, in theory.

 

[The Dude Abides]

In the past my store has shot manual autofills for heavy pull locations such as paper, chem, mmb and grc to prevent giant autofills. I am not sure what the point of doing it for every fillgroup at night would be, because then you are just moving the workload from the morning to the evening, but the pulls would still be the same.

 

[SFSFun]

What does the backroom team do once they are finished pulling and the unload isn't even halfway done?

 

[pfreshdude]

This would def not work at my store. Our backroom is super weird now. We have 1 person working out autofills til 4 but then the other closing backroom TM is responsible for setting the line, doing bales, plugging in the wave, crown and pallet jack, doing price change pulls, flexible fufillment, AND working out the Autofills/CAFs that are leftover. OH and obviously doing all the pulls by themselves. Which means they ALWAYS will have the 4's and 5's to do since when they pull it nobody is working it out.

I think the whole thing is total BS and since our BR is only scheduled til 7 I have no clue how they expect everything done by then. Ive done those price change pulls and when you have like 60 scans in JUST shoes, it can take alot of time since we cant even pull them until 6 and they have to leave at 7.

Between this and working out our C+S truck at night on non flow days, our store is just really really weird with some of the processes. And we have a push all truck process for flow which IMO is the biggest waste of time ever and it should go back to how it was plus a 4am starting time instead of our scores plummeting because guests have to maneuver around boxes and pallets and all this other crap until 10 or 10:30 sometimes

Honestly I feel like everything that falls under logistics is completely messed up and mismanaged at my store and it has an impact on the rest of the workcenters and it sucks

 

[Kartman]

Our backroom looks...

 

[ClarkKent]

We have just myself as the mid/closer and I always find time at night to bs or do projects. The brtl will not let us do manuals and recently got mad at me for pulling bts ptm because nobody pushed it and now their having us bs it.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

If you're a push all store, you definately don't want to shoot manuals, because any inbound product is now not going to fit. The point of the auto fill system is to acknowledge the dci before the pulls populate, so you're avoiding double work.

If you shoot manuals, you'll end up with more backstock as the product won't fit. It's essentially like you just pulled it, and rebackstocked it.

When we went to a push all, the only way I could be successful was to group crush the autofills. Everyone pulled them. I had 2 br tms, 6 plano tms, a pa, my signing tm, and the etl or myself. With 11 people doing it, they're normally done in about 30m, and your backroom can do sda and audit, then clean up any misc junk. If theres nothing to clean up (there always is) then I had them locu or purge small areas until the truck was done
Alternatively if the truck was large, I had them start stocking market or hba, to get the backstock rolling.

Don't look at it as backroom and flow teams. It's a logistics team. Once you go in with that mindset it becomes easier.

 

[Targe]

What does the backroom team do once they are finished pulling and the unload isn't even halfway done?

Typically we start our blackline freight if we finish before the unload is done. Though we are overnight and we are not push-all.

Typically if you want to prevent giant autofills, you'll want to do manual CAF with the bigger ones (GRC, CHEM, PAPR, etc) and go from there.
(DONT DO THIS IF YOURE PUSH ALL!!)

We usually have one of our O/N BRTMs come in at 9 on a busier day to do GRC autofills to help alleviate the pulls for the rest of the morning (Ours range from 4k up to 8900).'

Another thing to look for is overpulling or for tied endcaps that have been killed but not untied. Pay attention to what your backstocking and what you pulled. (Assuming you have different TMs that push the pulls).

Anyone else here have any ideas?

 

[ClarkKent]

Don't pull them and let them run into the 12s like they often do at my store.

 

[SFSFun]

Typically we start our blackline freight if we finish before the unload is done. Though we are overnight and we are not push-all.

That's what happens at my store too, but in @Alex123's scenario, the autofills would be finished 20-30 minutes into the unload. It would be kind of chaotic and counterproductive to start pulling pallets away before they are even halfway full.

 

[IhaveaDream]

Any bright ideas on how to reduce huge morning autofills?

LOL, let me honest. It is near impossible with as much detail as you gave. Need to know your store size, your truck size, if your backroom is clean of push and backstock every night, how accurate your instocks team works, is your backstock zoned well for maximum pull speed, if you have any spare hours, how backroom hours are spread out, how late your store is open, etc etc.

Instead of reducing their size, you just need to find a way to work them more efficiently. Remember your order of priority and do the best that you can.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

My questions are, did all teams push everything to the floor? It sounds like that you want to ck the autofill schedule with your etl.

 

[Alex123]

That's what happens at my store too, but in @Alex123's scenario, the autofills would be finished 20-30 minutes into the unload. It would be kind of chaotic and counterproductive to start pulling pallets away before they are even halfway full.

True, it is just weird how the district above mine has 45 minute autofills(i just trained there last week and saw it myself) and my districts stores usually have an autofill minimum of 5, we get 10 hour autofills on SAT/SUN/MON and some other stores have autofills as high as 25 hours.(volumes arent even that big)
Both districts are push all, so something can be done

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

True, it is just weird how the district above mine has 45 minute autofills(i just trained there last week and saw it myself) and my districts stores usually have an autofill minimum of 5, we get 10 hour autofills on SAT/SUN/MON and some other stores have autofills as high as 25 hours.(volumes arent even that big)
Both districts are push all, so something can be done

There are different trigger levels. Autofills are usually 30% while cafs are 10. In push all stores, these triggers were adjusted, it should be in your store specific rollout paperwork.

Dropping manuals is never a good may to truly reduce size. They're 99% trigger and you end up with a considerably larger pull. You're not making the workload smaller, you're just moving it. Which, is fine if that's what you want to do. But you could gain more productivity by moving that payroll to just pulling the autos.

The long and short of it is, you won't really ever get your autos any smaller. Using all of the resources available to you will net you a good result. 30m of everyone's day =/= 4 hours of 2 people's day. The synergy is much higher and you lose much less productivory overall if everyone in the store pulls them.

 

[livi0073]

This is a never-ending cycle... In order to have smaller autofills, you would basically want everything to be full on the salesfloor as often as possible - which should be the goal of logistics in general. Now, here is where the cycle starts... The more full the sales floor, the more sales you do - which starts the cycle over again. If you can get your system (since it is sfq now and not the accumulator, I don't know what to call it...) working correctly and your data integrity is perfect, ie. sfqs and capacities all correct throughout the whole sales floor, then your pulls will be accurate all the time and you'll sell more product keeping as much out of the back as possible. This process is ruined when you get into PTM areas - who has time to pull and work dcode and ptm batches anyway!?

 

[semantics]

True, it is just weird how the district above mine has 45 minute autofills(i just trained there last week and saw it myself) and my districts stores usually have an autofill minimum of 5, we get 10 hour autofills on SAT/SUN/MON and some other stores have autofills as high as 25 hours.(volumes arent even that big)
Both districts are push all, so something can be done

25hour autos...I remember we had a 38 hour autofill during last seasonal, what fun.

It's an interesting idea but we usually only have 1 closer, 4a.m. process even with the reduced CAFs unsure how much they can do while maintaining their other duties.

 

[RandomRedShirt]

The only way my store figured out how to handle the gigantic autofills was to drop manuals around 5 or 6 p.m. you can see a distinct difference when the backroom team does not get to, pulling chemicals will be five vehicles if they don't. My backroom team early morning only has four people including myself so we're stretched thin.

 

[SFSFun]

Our closer used to just backstock all night, but since we've been coming clean, he's started pulling and pushing manuals for our heaviest fillgroups. It makes a huge difference, especially on non-truck days when we only have 1 or 2 TMs pulling autofills.

 

[Rock Lobster]

The only way my store figured out how to handle the gigantic autofills was to drop manuals around 5 or 6 p.m. you can see a distinct difference when the backroom team does not get to, pulling chemicals will be five vehicles if they don't. My backroom team early morning only has four people including myself so we're stretched thin.

We have somewhat larger autofills than normal, but not by much. We NEVER do manuals except for maybe Diaper since it can blow out in sale weeks, otherwise the rest of the fillgroups only do the normal CAF and Autofill schedule (with a mid-day scan and zone of high traffic areas such as Paper, Chem, Dary, Furn etc).

The point is that the pulls are going to be somewhat larger. You have to get through the initial hump of letting the new system work for you and let your open vs casestock flush out. Too many manuals will break open your cases and turn them into open stock, and then the entire autofill and pushing process starts taking longer.

Let your floor get "lighter" but not empty and do the least amount of work possible (do bare minimum with system pulls and do midday outs scans). Allow the stockroom to start purging itself over a few weeks (lots of openstock will start pushing out but you will be backstocking more casetock) and over time you will see more push off the trailer and more case stock locations coming out on autofills. We actually get done faster than before the pull changes on the same payroll because its more efficient.

 

[Rolling CAFS]

On a good day our autos are 8 hrs but it's more the 11-13 hr autos we come into. We're not a push all store and we drop manuals in core fill groups 3 times a week and have softlines/ bbo1,2 and3 do POG fills. We have 5 pullers for autos and manuals/POG dropped strategically so we get it pulled with minimal disruption to backstocking. My BIGGEST issue is challenge from the truck...2-3 smart carts a day. If truck isn't pushed right and zone is a hot mess your pulls will reflect that so create strong partnerships and have them understand a full floor is the goal not a full backroom. Also all manuals and POG pulls are pushed by sales floor