Archived Replenishment Team Lead

[TheLead]

I am new in role, and I'm having trouble. As an ultra low volume store, our flow, instocks, and backroom only has one team lead, me. Even in a small store I don't understand how this position is supposed to survive, let alone thrive. Help?

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Learning plans & lots of training for starters. Partner with your etl-log. Also, search our threads for more info.

 

[Mhugh220]

Master one area at a time. You can't shit rainbows all the time. But regardless of store volume, that's a lot of responsibility for a single TL in terms of metrics.

Master the flow process, then focus on location accuracy, then in stocks should be easy if those other two areas are green. Hopefully your ETL plays an active role in leading these areas. I had 4 TLs for flow and back room, 1 TL for instocks, and 1 TL for dayside back room. With all that help I still played an active role in keeping our metrics green. I stepped in to push, pull, or run reports when needed. Since you are a one man/woman band - your ETL needs to be present.

 

[TheLead]

I know most of ths ins and outs of my processes, its just management that doesn't seem plausible. small or not I still over see 30+/- team members With 3 very important work centers (not much less responsibility than the ETL) which about 65% of keeping all processes green come from the backroom, but I don't get time to get back there (only about once a week). Is there anyone on here in a ULV store that this position is actually sucessful? (I was told all ULV have the same position now).

 

[RedDog]

That sounds like a complete nightmare. They would have had to double my pay to even try and take on all that. Putting somebody new in role into that is just plain stupid.

 

[incredulu]

I know most of ths ins and outs of my processes, its just management that doesn't seem plausible. small or not I still over see 30+/- team members With 3 very important work centers (not much less responsibility than the ETL) which about 65% of keeping all processes green come from the backroom, but I don't get time to get back there (only about once a week). Is there anyone on here in a ULV store that this position is actually sucessful? (I was told all ULV have the same position now).

What's your flow process like? How many people do you use and what's your wave look like?

 

[SFSFun]

Our Backroom TL has been covering Backroom, Flow, and Ship from Store since the Flow TL quit a few weeks ago. We are at the upper range of B volume.

We have strong Backroom and SFS teams so for the most part, he spends his days with Flow and the other teams work independently.

I suspect our ETL-SF/GE is handling Instocks but I never really know what's going on with them.

 

[kingpin003]

Previous posters have said it exactly right. Start with flow. Focus on getting that process organized and successful. You must balance a speed is life mentality with a focus on accuracy. Make sure you have the right trainers and the right team members working in breakouts. Do not be afraid to break from the norm or change up people's routines. The person who has been accustomed to doing a specific task may not be the best person for the task, so you have to be willing to try different team members. Flow is your most agile resource, you can make changes and see instantly if it was successful. If it wasn't, you go back to the old process or find a new one.

Once your flow team is moving efficiently and accurately and meeting your speed expectations, you should be able to spend more time working with the backroom. Luckily, once flow is on pace, the backroom portion is substantially easier. If flow is behind, backroom will be too. Try new processes in the back. See what works for you. Are you bowling out the pallets from the truck? We usually have 1 team member bowl and the others follow while backstocking. If the aisles are full, encourage them to help each other so you minimize steps going up and down ladders. Any free time you have, you can have the team start to low and pro the backroom, moving product down into empty locations near the ground so it's quicker and easier to pull. Teach them how to do things like the empty location report, so that you can proactively minimize ghosts. Identify your high performing team members, and teach them how to work the audit batch and backroom SDA. Backroom should be able to be pretty self-sufficient.

Instocks is your tool. It allows you to understand where the chinks in the armor are. Instocks scores are mostly a reflection on your other processes. Instocks may be graded on things such as backroom percent, but they do not control the metric. That is on flow, backroom, and autofills. You will be able to use your instocks team to assess where the flow team is missing opportunities to fill multiple locations and help keep d-code out of the backroom. Teach instocks to flex and fill proactively. Endcaps are your friend, keep them full and impactful by shopping from the backroom. Empower them and encourage them to PTM aggressively. If you have a high performer, get them familiar with the MPG-At-A-Glance tool, so they can see upcoming transitions before they hit the PTM app. This will keep your workload more consistent and prevent so much from hitting when the aisles go MPG. These are your eyes and ears. Teach them to be aware as they work and report trends that you see; is flow over or underpushing certain areas? Are you missing second and third locations? They walk the store daily, utilize them to understand where your problem areas are and you can solve them.

Most importantly, teach and delegate. You can not be the hero by yourself, target is not asking you to. You are there to develop and lead a team that can function without you. Make sure you get the right people on the right tasks and teach them what they need to know.

 

[TheLead]

Thanks so much. I am use to being the 100% hands on, does everything team member. This is a new point of view. I do have doubts that I can get the team self efficient (the team lacks reliability and extra effort), but if I could that would definitely help. I don't think there is anyone I can rely on the look at reports and things of that nature, however my ETL does play an active role there so it makes it easier. I'm not one for delegating my job off, but I guess that is my best option.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I am new in role, and I'm having trouble. As an ultra low volume store, our flow, instocks, and backroom only has one team lead, me. Even in a small store I don't understand how this position is supposed to survive, let alone thrive. Help?

I was in the exact situation you are before I left, except I was a senior, so add 3 lod shifts on there. My etl was very hands off, and inexperienced.

The first thing I can tell you is, most of your time will go to flow. A poor flow process will destroy your backroom, instocks, and pog process. So focus your efforts there.

You need strong backroom players. The only way I was successful was because I had 3 backroom team members who I trained to know everything. They managed everything, from metrics, to ELR's, to space management. 2 of them were promoted to replace me shortly after I left. Without these people, you will fail, and quickly.

Once you are at a point where trucks are consistently getting done, start shifting payroll from flow to backroom. Move 1 flow tm to the backroom on a smaller truck, and have then work pulls/backstock and have your normal team purge/lOcu.

In all honesty though, I quit target after 12 years because of this position. Well, mostly my shitty boss and stl, but the position played a lot into it. You just don't get paid enough to justify the massive amount of work it is.

 

[TheLead]

I just wanted to say, if anyone is reading this because they themselves have been offered the position. Don't do it. Don't think about the money you aren't making. Think about keeping your job with a great company.
In all honesty, if you don't have the support needed, it's impossible. And since management (ETLs and higher) try for promoting and rotarating every 18 months, you just never know what your going to get. Also since the position is only in ULV (for now), We have no hours without hours, I have no team, without a team I have no one to delegate to (also impossible to do truck with hours given) and without that I have way too much for a sane person to handle. Easily 80 hours worth of work if you don't have everyone taking care of more than the minimum requirements.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

I just wanted to say, if anyone is reading this because they themselves have been offered the position. Don't do it. Don't think about the money you aren't making. Think about keeping your job with a great company.
In all honesty, if you don't have the support needed, it's impossible. And since management (ETLs and higher) try for promoting and rotarating every 18 months, you just never know what your going to get. Also since the position is only in ULV (for now), We have no hours without hours, I have no team, without a team I have no one to delegate to (also impossible to do truck with hours given) and without that I have way too much for a sane person to handle. Easily 80 hours worth of work if you don't have everyone taking care of more than the minimum requirements.

Thanks for the update!

 

[Mhugh220]

Try running a AA or AA+ process with the same hours as a C store. I looked on work bench once and our low volume store was getting 5 hours less than us. How is that possible? We had 7-8 trucks a week, they had 2-3. I've unloaded 2500+ trucks with 10 TMs total on a Saturday. That's huge auto fills, a big truck, 2 levels to push, and 10 people total. Whatever areas you don't finish you start the wave there the next night. The worst nights were on the last day of the month, when my STL cut my entire team but wouldn't stop the truck from coming. I didn't even open the trailer because it was me and 2 TLs. We just took a double the next night, which also sucked.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

Try running a AA or AA+ process with the same hours as a C store. I looked on work bench once and our low volume store was getting 5 hours less than us. How is that possible? We had 7-8 trucks a week, they had 2-3. I've unloaded 2500+ trucks with 10 TMs total on a Saturday. That's huge auto fills, a big truck, 2 levels to push, and 10 people total. Whatever areas you don't finish you start the wave there the next night. The worst nights were on the last day of the month, when my STL cut my entire team but wouldn't stop the truck from coming. I didn't even open the trailer because it was me and 2 TLs. We just took a double the next night, which also sucked.

I've run both AAA and ULV processes. ULV was by far the hardest, as trying to manage all 4 processes at once as opposed to just 2 was infinitely more stressful. A strong etl would have gone a long way to help with this in ulv, but sadly she was very much a "it's your job" type of leader.