What does upper management “do”

[WHS]

Not being sarcastic. I’m just curious if anyone knows specifics of what the management team above Operation Managers do day to day.

Like I know a Performance Controller authorizes flex up/down and VLE. But that’s such a small part. What else do they do

What does the 900 different quality managers do

What does the Site Director actually do? The person underneath them?

 

[Captain Orca]

They have nice lunch meetings. They go zip-line riding at team building bullshit events. They take company paid for trips and spend company money. They get drunk together.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

@Hal please assist.

 

[Ringwraith917]

A few smallish things, for each store they're responsible for, so a few hundred things daily. At least that's my guess.

 

[WHS]

A few smallish things, for each store they're responsible for, so a few hundred things daily. At least that's my guess.

Distribution Center. Not stores

 

[Ringwraith917]

Distribution Center. Not stores

Oh I didnt look at the thread category, sorry

 

[Grunt]

They have nice lunch meetings. They go zip-line riding at team building bullshit events. They take company paid for trips and spend company money. They get drunk together.

I'm not much of a drinker but sign me up for the rest of it!

 

[Yaz Pistasio]

Distribution Center. Not stores

circle jerk all day….

 

[Black Sheep 214]

circle jerk all day….

Apparently distribution centers and stores do have something in common.😂

 

[Luck]

I know The PC actually have a lot of reports they need to file. An anecdote I can provide from one back when they were training is they finished up the reports they were assugned by the B1 PC training them at 2pm and felt they were a little slow at it and asked how long it took that PC to do those reports.

The PC then informed them those were the reports that are all due before 9am 😁

Otherwise the PC is the moderator between all departments. They are in charge of the entire days plan. They look at all the big numbers and help the OMs with staffing. For example OB might be a low plan but the PC sees that IB has a large plan and tell the OB OM not to VLE but instead flex TMs.

The SOMs are doing everything you think your OMs are doing. OMs basically have no power. SOMs are making the decisions on real changes and testing new processes.

The ICQA OMs are just ICQA.
The CI (continuous improvement) OMs are dealing with inventory issues. They are basically capacity OMs.

I dunno. I find they actually all do have their purpose.

 

[Hal]

They have nice lunch meetings. They go zip-line riding at team building bullshit events. They take company paid for trips and spend company money. They get drunk together.

Well I've been working the wrong role. I don't get to do any of those things.

 

[Hal]

I know The PC actually have a lot of reports they need to file. An anecdote I can provide from one back when they were training is they finished up the reports they were assugned by the B1 PC training them at 2pm and felt they were a little slow at it and asked how long it took that PC to do those reports.

The PC then informed them those were the reports that are all due before 9am 😁

Otherwise the PC is the moderator between all departments. They are in charge of the entire days plan. They look at all the big numbers and help the OMs with staffing. For example OB might be a low plan but the PC sees that IB has a large plan and tell the OB OM not to VLE but instead flex TMs.

The SOMs are doing everything you think your OMs are doing. OMs basically have no power. SOMs are making the decisions on real changes and testing new processes.

The ICQA OMs are just ICQA.
The CI (continuous improvement) OMs are dealing with inventory issues. They are basically capacity OMs.

I dunno. I find they actually all do have their purpose.

Pretty much all this. OMs are just managing day to day operations. They build a plan based on the forecasts that the Field Labor Analyst and the Production Controllers create.

CI has two roles. OB CI manages capacity. IB manages SWA results and gemba board audits. The two often overlap in their roles. But they look at results from standard work audits and gemba boards and sees where the gaps are especially around productivity and delivery(delivery is how fast product gets from one dept to the other and then out the door.)

ICQA is as luck describes it, trying to figure out how we can make less mistakes. Usually because we're off standard somewhere.

TOMs (Training Operations Managers) are responsible for training and onboarding at all levels of the building.

Safety Managers is pretty self-explanatory.

SOMs report to the Operations Directors who are focused on the building from a day shift/night shift perspective. So how well the are keys working together to accomplish the building goals and what keys are lagging behind and impacting the performance metrics. (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Prod)

And the Site Director oversees it all and then is responsible for explaining to the people above, what the buildings wins and opportunities are and what they're doing to improve or maintain current performance.

I get it. Coming from a team member background I use to think the people above didn't do anything. Turns out that's not true. They're just as busy if not moreso and their mistakes have much bigger impacts than you realize. Unfortunately we only see what happens when they screw up because if they're doing their jobs well then you shouldn't even notice they're doing anything.

 

[targetdude1]

I could be wrong but, i dont see that ICQA does much. As my coworker put it, the more ICQA there is, the worse condition the racks get in, it seems.

I think they would be better spent literally going from aisle to aisle cleaning locations than....whatever it is they supposedly do. There are so many of them yet how many locations are they hitting? Seems very few. The locations are trashed with wrong product, empty boxes etc etc.

I dont know, I'm not an expert but the amount of people not doing production seems immense and wasteful and getting worse over time. Between leads, backup leads, trainers, ICQA, problem area, rework, OOA, teachers pets who do odd jobs all day, OM's, SOM's, trainer OM's, multiple ppl in label control when it seems like 1-2 would be plenty most of the time, the never ending ever more numerous safety people, capacity, capacity leads, on and on. I literally saw about 9 people standing around behind the yellow fence the other day, and there were 3 more sitting around in label control a few feet away. Logistics/safety/management/other non productive functions should not take more manpower than processing, one would think...

 

[WHS]

I d

Pretty much all this. OMs are just managing day to day operations. They build a plan based on the forecasts that the Field Labor Analyst and the Production Controllers create.

CI has two roles. OB CI manages capacity. IB manages SWA results and gemba board audits. The two often overlap in their roles. But they look at results from standard work audits and gemba boards and sees where the gaps are especially around productivity and delivery(delivery is how fast product gets from one dept to the other and then out the door.)

ICQA is as luck describes it, trying to figure out how we can make less mistakes. Usually because we're off standard somewhere.

TOMs (Training Operations Managers) are responsible for training and onboarding at all levels of the building.

Safety Managers is pretty self-explanatory.

SOMs report to the Operations Directors who are focused on the building from a day shift/night shift perspective. So how well the are keys working together to accomplish the building goals and what keys are lagging behind and impacting the performance metrics. (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Prod)

And the Site Director oversees it all and then is responsible for explaining to the people above, what the buildings wins and opportunities are and what they're doing to improve or maintain current performance.

I get it. Coming from a team member background I use to think the people above didn't do anything. Turns out that's not true. They're just as busy if not moreso and their mistakes have much bigger impacts than you realize. Unfortunately we only see what happens when they screw up because if they're doing their jobs well then you shouldn't even notice they're doing anything.

Appreciate the summary. And I definitely don’t think they do nothing. It’s just that it’s all out of site for day to day team members so it’s a big mystery what their roles actually pertain to beyond the obvious

 

[WHS]

I could be wrong but, i dont see that ICQA does much. As my coworker put it, the more ICQA there is, the worse condition the racks get in, it seems.

I mean I get that feeling. I work directly with ICQA a lot and in our building there’s a concerning knowledge gap for a good chunk of them. There’s a few on our key who are immensely good at their job and help fix / catch issues before they become huge problems. But there also team members on their team who would better serve the building sweeping the floors and never adjusting a count again in their life

 

[WSX37]

I could be wrong but, i dont see that ICQA does much. As my coworker put it, the more ICQA there is, the worse condition the racks get in, it seems.

I think they would be better spent literally going from aisle to aisle cleaning locations than....whatever it is they supposedly do. There are so many of them yet how many locations are they hitting? Seems very few. The locations are trashed with wrong product, empty boxes etc etc.

I dont know, I'm not an expert but the amount of people not doing production seems immense and wasteful and getting worse over time. Between leads, backup leads, trainers, ICQA, problem area, rework, OOA, teachers pets who do odd jobs all day, OM's, SOM's, trainer OM's, multiple ppl in label control when it seems like 1-2 would be plenty most of the time, the never ending ever more numerous safety people, capacity, capacity leads, on and on. I literally saw about 9 people standing around behind the yellow fence the other day, and there were 3 more sitting around in label control a few feet away. Logistics/safety/management/other non productive functions should not take more manpower than processing, one would think...

ICQA is useless because nobody in charge cares, they are basically doing audits to find errors and they report these errors to the respective TM's OM who then do nothing about it.
They audit IB pallets but they then have to deal with the 5 year olds on the dock who deny they built the screwed up pallet and refuse to fx it and run up and rip off the stop flag as soon as they leave so it ends up getting gpm's into the warehouse. Plus they can only audit the top fron pallet of any row so they are missing out on most of the screwed up pallets.

The locations they visit are either the locations you put on hold both or locations the system generates for them to check the count/dpci accuracy of. If you come accross something screwed up you are supposed to put in on hold for them to fix.

Then they do amnesty which is just a dumping ground for all stray boxes people find, most of which is caused by MBP not understanding what an SSP is.

If we didnt have such horrendously bad training and high turnover rates things might change but as it sits its like digging a hole and having 10 guys filling it back in at the same time.

 

[DC Diva]

Upper management does their damdest to justify creating all these “feel good” speciality positions, so they can say promoting from within, even When the roles are worthless. Here a merit, there a merit, everywhere a merit. Usually not adding anything of value. but when hires see their peers promoting, they tend to stick around, for their chance. So to combat attrition, new positions! Thus, making upper management look good. It’s no coincidence this latest round of bullshit is right before the next best team survey, which weighs heavily on their bonuses.

 

[Dcnewb4now]

Upper management does their damdest to justify creating all these “feel good” speciality positions, so they can say promoting from within, even When the roles are worthless. Here a merit, there a merit, everywhere a merit. Usually not adding anything of value. but when hires see their peers promoting, they tend to stick around, for their chance. So to combat attrition, new positions! Thus, making upper management look good. It’s no coincidence this latest round of bullshit is right before the next best team survey, which weighs heavily on their bonuses.

Bts doesn’t affect bonuses. Bonuses are based off of company and personal performance. Om’s have known for months they are t getting squat for a bonus this year.

 

[Hal]

Upper management does their damdest to justify creating all these “feel good” speciality positions, so they can say promoting from within, even When the roles are worthless. Here a merit, there a merit, everywhere a merit. Usually not adding anything of value. but when hires see their peers promoting, they tend to stick around, for their chance. So to combat attrition, new positions! Thus, making upper management look good. It’s no coincidence this latest round of bullshit is right before the next best team survey, which weighs heavily on their bonuses.

Upper management also has 0 to do with thr creation of these merit positions. Its all from HQ.

You honestly seem like someone pissed off at management for decisions that HQ pushes.

Its a well known fact among distro management that HQ creates and pushes trash. Most of the time its just management job to do their best to roll out the steaming dumpster of crap they've been given.

If HQ says we go right and management says we should go left. Guess what? We're going right.

 

[sleepercell]

Then they do amnesty which is just a dumping ground for all stray boxes people find, most of which is caused by MBP not understanding what an SSP is.

Can't forget the TMs who stick literal full pallets in the Amnesty bins sometimes. And, god, the damages. Yum. Love finding bugs in there when they belong in the damage bins.

 

[DC Diva]

Upper management also has 0 to do with thr creation of these merit positions. Its all from HQ.

You honestly seem like someone pissed off at management for decisions that HQ pushes.

Its a well known fact among distro management that HQ creates and pushes trash. Most of the time its just management job to do their best to roll out the steaming dumpster of crap they've been given.

If HQ says we go right and management says we should go left. Guess what? We're going right.

Ya think? It’s safe to assume that over 20 years or so I’ve seen alot, and felt screwed over a lot, by a few decisions that make zero sense. especially over the past 5 years, when everything seemed to benefit newer hires with a big middle finger to anyone that has any sort of tenure.

 

[brizzality]

Just left target last month. There are better companies without the layers of management. We have 3 ops managers, 4 supervisors per shift. Day/night shift. I left my lead role in warehousing for a supervisor position in inbound At my new company for more $ and less headache. We don’t have to do hour by hour number analysis that doesn’t do anything to help people pick faster. Target over hired and I was literally asking people to come home ALL THE TIME. Had 5 good years but did not want the OM role at target. I went to college so I feel the disrespect about going through a developmental program for a job they hire people with 0 experience for. The other lead is still there and been in the development role for about 6 months. He was told he may be Able to apply for an OM spot this year lol.

I was there 5 years, had 11 OM’s. It was A2 so not that appealing but had 3 senior om’s in the past 14 months. No stable leadership is a huge disappointment and overall morale was in the toilet. Good luck to all but don’t be afraid and go get the job you deserve at a company who sees the potential you have.