MEGATHREAD Signing Tips, Tricks and Quips (along with howls of despair)

Have seen SFT remove endcap basedeck, put a heavy duty black pallet on the forks of the Crown, and push the gondola into position. Doesn't look "brand", but it works. Gondola was not demerched, but nothing bad happened.
 
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Have seen SFT remove endcap basedeck, put a heavy duty black pallet on the forks of the Crown, and push the gondola into position. Doesn't look "brand", but it works. Gondola was not demerched, but nothing bad happened.

That's badass, but I'd hate to have to move the thing more than a foot... I feel like the rearmost sections would start to steer themselves out of alignment.
 
Have seen SFT remove endcap basedeck, put a heavy duty black pallet on the forks of the Crown, and push the gondola into position. Doesn't look "brand", but it works. Gondola was not demerched, but nothing bad happened.

Color me impressed.
We're going to have to try something.
There was no way in hell we could have talked out PTL into demerching the entire gondola anyway and our STL pretty much did the "I got this, built lots of these, who needs instructions." thing.
 
Heads up. Takes 1 person about 20 hours to pre-build the bts bins. Instructions give you alot more time, but if you get the old assembly line going, you can do it in half the time.
 
Have seen SFT remove endcap basedeck, put a heavy duty black pallet on the forks of the Crown, and push the gondola into position. Doesn't look "brand", but it works. Gondola was not demerched, but nothing bad happened.

Are you talking a powered pallet jack or a Stacker? If it was the Stacker(walk behind forklift), I don't believe they are ever suppose to be on the salesfloor, company rules.
 
Are you talking a powered pallet jack or a Stacker? If it was the Stacker(walk behind forklift), I don't believe they are ever suppose to be on the salesfloor, company rules.

We park ours in Electronics during truck unload. We just make sure not to drop the forks all the way for fear of cracking a tile.
 
I put up the Pencil across the transom windows today. Its actually a floor sticker, so seeing bubbles was almost impossible. One good thing is that I was able to use the window cleaner (blue) solution to put it on. LOTS of spray made it easier to slide the bubbles out... Also the instructions show you sticking it directly over the store address numbers. Don't recommend that. I cut a square out around the numbers. I didn't want to have to redo the numbers as this sticker would definitely pull them off when its removed.
 
what do you guys do to make bts go more smoothly? do you build bins ahead of time? whats the best method?
 
what do you guys do to make bts go more smoothly? do you build bins ahead of time? whats the best method?

This week I've been building all the bins. Took about three days to do. This way the day that BTS sets I can just bring out all the bins and they can put them on the shelves.
 
Start prebuilding bins 3 days before your set. All the prebuilt bins took up about 10 pallet spaces. I sorted them by color and style.

Hopefully you have a vacated garden center to store them in.

I like doing for example; 1 or 2 steps to all the bins, then doing 3&4 steps to all bins, and so on. I swear I go faster doing it that way.

Preprint out all the 3x5/7x11 signs before hand. Requisition a big glue stick to tack down the product cards that go on the double bins under pens and markers and floor bins. (Of course don't do this until they are set)
 
Heads up. Takes 1 person about 20 hours to pre-build the bts bins. Instructions give you alot more time, but if you get the old assembly line going, you can do it in half the time.

Can you tell me where you found this information about the time to build the bins? I didn't see it in the Monthly Signing Update. If it's in the Transition Visual Adjacency, are you a Freaky/Super Freaky/Ultra Freaky store?

Thanks!
 
Nowhere in the updates. I have already done it. We are an early set store.

Not sure how freaky we are, but definitely not an ulv. :)
 
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Can you tell me where you found this information about the time to build the bins? I didn't see it in the Monthly Signing Update. If it's in the Transition Visual Adjacency, are you a Freaky/Super Freaky/Ultra Freaky store?

Thanks!

The time for building the bins will be on the instruction sheets in the cartons containing the bins themselves. I could be wrong, but Target assumes the whole PLANO team will be building the bins (not just the signing TM, though this is typically the case) because I have never seen the bin building time allocated to the signing workcenter. It should be included in the time to set the POGs, but I could be wrong. Could be one of those things that TGT never accounts for.

Somewhat related Q - are any of the focal signing elements for endcaps ever included in the time for the signing workload? like say the overheads or floor clings for the Toy Focal? I always do them, but I don't think the hours are actually allocated to me. Can anybody confirm?
 
The time for building the bins will be on the instruction sheets in the cartons containing the bins themselves. I could be wrong, but Target assumes the whole PLANO team will be building the bins (not just the signing TM, though this is typically the case) because I have never seen the bin building time allocated to the signing workcenter. It should be included in the time to set the POGs, but I could be wrong. Could be one of those things that TGT never accounts for.

Somewhat related Q - are any of the focal signing elements for endcaps ever included in the time for the signing workload? like say the overheads or floor clings for the Toy Focal? I always do them, but I don't think the hours are actually allocated to me. Can anybody confirm?

I can't confirm on this, but I can say that I do the toy and entertainment focals too. That workload is part of the plano workload, but due to the amount of signing involved, my PTL kicks the set/stock/sign over to me. I remember the set times for those being longer if you look at the TWT, so it's probably under plano.

Speaking of which, what is everybody responsible for at their store in terms of signing/their job (not just their core roles that we all have company wide).
 
I can't confirm on this, but I can say that I do the toy and entertainment focals too. That workload is part of the plano workload, but due to the amount of signing involved, my PTL kicks the set/stock/sign over to me. I remember the set times for those being longer if you look at the TWT, so it's probably under plano.

Speaking of which, what is everybody responsible for at their store in terms of signing/their job (not just their core roles that we all have company wide).

Technically they are endcaps/salesplanners. Some stores will allocate the hours for these to the planogram team, but others will leave it under hardlines/salesfloor for the hardlines team to complete as they set them. At my store it is under salesfloor, and then all the hours associated with that salesplanner are kicked over to salesfloor. Since these don't come up under the planogram workload (signing hours off of TWT) and are not on the Monthly Signing Update technically we are not allocated hours as "signing" to sign them. Like any other salesplanner they are to be completed by those assigned (in our case salesfloor). I just wanted to know if anyone else knew otherwise. It has always been this way at our store, but with new ETLs who do not know best practice they do not know ultimately who is responsible. Obviously I do any overheads or floor clings since they are simply not equipped, experienced with, or available at appropriate hours (before store open) to be completed by anyone else.
 
I'll be building the bins on my own.
Going to try and get as many as I can done ahead of time but who knows.
I put up fixtures, do all the displays, floor clings, build furniture, clean up the fixture room, do the daily 'emergency signing' batches', break down the supply pallets and deliver the supplies, back up the SFT when he needs a strong back, find things for people even when you've told them where it is four or five times, and generally fix and repair everything on a daily basis.
 
I'll be building the bins on my own.
Going to try and get as many as I can done ahead of time but who knows.
I put up fixtures, do all the displays, floor clings, build furniture, clean up the fixture room, do the daily 'emergency signing' batches', break down the supply pallets and deliver the supplies, back up the SFT when he needs a strong back, find things for people even when you've told them where it is four or five times, and generally fix and repair everything on a daily basis.

"same" but it seems with every newer and newer batch of ETLs they only worry about things like conversion, or salesfloor speed, or how many carts of reshop can you do?

it's a problem recently that they have been ignoring most of the special teams in the store in favor of people to do the most basic things like zone, reshop, etc. i mean, i get it, but in the long run you'll pay for it when you have a crappy set of specialty teams from pricing to plano to instocks, to backroom, etc. also, my store is super high volume, so its not like a one-room school house where everyone is on every team. idk.

but i digress. i'll probably start building bins tomorrow if i can snag an hour or two when we're not clearing out the backroom.
 
I'll be building the bins on my own.
Going to try and get as many as I can done ahead of time but who knows.
I put up fixtures, do all the displays, floor clings, build furniture, clean up the fixture room, do the daily 'emergency signing' batches', break down the supply pallets and deliver the supplies, back up the SFT when he needs a strong back, find things for people even when you've told them where it is four or five times, and generally fix and repair everything on a daily basis.

I basically do what you do, especially the finding everything for everyone.

Signing hours need to be forecasted in Max, then all of this confusion would go away. Leaving it up to the individual stores to decide if they Feel like giving out the signing adjacency hours to their signing tm is obviously not working. The signing adjacency times (not forecasted in max or plano times) are spot on for how long it takes to do all we are supposed to do each week. Signing update hours is a joke. If we went only by that, we would get 3 hours a week on average.

Time for building the bins wasn't included in the plano set times. That's obvious if you look how many hours they were given to set and fill each planogram.

Instruction build times were way off. 15 minutes for building a floor bin, then giving 20 (takes 5)for building a single notebook bin ?

I can see we are all being pushed to our limit. I literally RUN from task to task to get it all done in the hours I am given. I come home physically & mentally exhausted. I write to do lists when I get home, because I can't stop thinking about how to make it all happen tomorrow. I know I have it better than some (sorry nop), but not enough to maintain my store to the standard I want to. I guess that is good enough for 2012 Target?
 
I basically do what you do, especially the finding everything for everyone.

Signing hours need to be forecasted in Max, then all of this confusion would go away. Leaving it up to the individual stores to decide if they Feel like giving out the signing adjacency hours to their signing tm is obviously not working. The signing adjacency times (not forecasted in max or plano times) are spot on for how long it takes to do all we are supposed to do each week. Signing update hours is a joke. If we went only by that, we would get 3 hours a week on average.

Time for building the bins wasn't included in the plano set times. That's obvious if you look how many hours they were given to set and fill each planogram.

Instruction build times were way off. 15 minutes for building a floor bin, then giving 20 (takes 5)for building a single notebook bin ?

I can see we are all being pushed to our limit. I literally RUN from task to task to get it all done in the hours I am given. I come home physically & mentally exhausted. I write to do lists when I get home, because I can't stop thinking about how to make it all happen tomorrow. I know I have it better than some (sorry nop), but not enough to maintain my store to the standard I want to. I guess that is good enough for 2012 Target?

i think your last question hit the nail on the head. but it doesn't matter if hq said the pog/signing team got 1000 hours a week. your stl would just adjust the hours and give them to another workcenter, and then expect you to set all their endcaps/tables/clearance/ptm/cover the boat and leave an hour early.
 
I'll be building the bins on my own.
Going to try and get as many as I can done ahead of time but who knows.
I put up fixtures, do all the displays, floor clings, build furniture, clean up the fixture room, do the daily 'emergency signing' batches', break down the supply pallets and deliver the supplies, back up the SFT when he needs a strong back, find things for people even when you've told them where it is four or five times, and generally fix and repair everything on a daily basis.

Do the same thing you do. I also have to backup my PTL when they are not there or have to do some other project that day. Always have to build displays, especially infants and furniture (IMPACT was scheduled a week after our set week). The thing that frustrates me the most is when team members put away fixtures in the wrong bins and it mixes everything up. When I others ask me where a fixture is and I tell them where it is, they cannot find it because it is buried under some other fixture that doesn't belong there.

Finished all the BTS bins and put them on 8 pallets in our old garden area. Luckily there wasn't a lot of signing to do this week. Had to get them done quick since next week I only got 5 signing hours.
 
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