Anyone who knows how to do CAO, please post to this with detailed instructions. Or if you can make a video of it, then do so and post the link. I think this would be a great thing to have on this website for us Kroger employees. Tips, Organized Instructables, how to do a better job in certain departments, etc. Personal experience and how you do your job in your way which works well...
This is from memory, and nowhere near complete, just a starters guide.
Some useful terminology:
CAO: Computer Assisted Ordering
BOH: Balance on Hand (How many of the product is in the store)
Minimum: The minimum number of product before CAO orders a case. Keep in mind CAO uses forecasting, so even if you have a minimum set at say, 10 but you have a BOH of 12 it might order a case depending on movement history.
PAK: Number of product that comes packed to a case.
ALLOC: Allocation (Total number of product that fits on the shelf, excluding any displays or promotional areas, strictly the permanent shelf spot)
OpOrder: Open order ( How many cases of the product are set to be ordered for the next truck during the open order window or Poll time. This is what you change to add/subtract a product from the order. Outside of the poll time the number will move to OnOrder)
OnOrder: The order that has been closed and sent to the warehouse. No more changes can be made.
And some key combinations, there are others but these are the ones I use the most.
F0: Shows adjustment history. Useful to seeing when a balance has been changed and why.
F2: Allows you to edit the editable information.
F3: Shows the movement on the item you scanned for the last 4 weeks. Useful for keeping track of trends on products. For example, CAO may be picking up movement history on weeks prior on specific days, but you can check to see here to see if those were abnormal short term trends that have halted, or if they are becoming regular. If they are short term, you can take it off the order because most likely it won't sell like it did a couple weeks prior.
F5: Saves the information, if changes are made it will ask you the reason code.
F9: Shows various information about the product including cost to kroger, retail price, ad information etc.
Ctrl O: Order history, shows last time the product was ordered and if it was scratched. Useful for checking to see if the warehouse shorted(billed, but not received) the product, they were out of it(scratched) or any other reason code.
Ctrl T: Used for printing, be it for inventory, or a price tag.
1. CAO (You shouldn't need to access any other part of the RF unless you plan on changing a price)
->
1. Item Maintenance (Use this mode for general maintenance, for example PLM/Kompass does a reset and you need to adjust Allocations/Minimums)
2. Backstock Review (Use for scanning residual backstock and doing backstock reports)
Select your department from the next menu
Scan item
It will ask you if the BOH is correct. If Yes, press Y, if no Press N.
If you're doing your backstock report, simply hit escape after you are done scanning all product in a given area that you are making a report of and hit 1. for process. Then it will ask you if you want to print. Hit Y for yes. Then it will ask you the formatting. This is up to you, but I use U for categorizing it, you can also use S for scan sequence which prints the report in the order you scan.
3. Order Review (use this mode for ordering during the order window, or poll time)
Pretty straight forward. If you want to order a product F2 to edit, then add 1 to the OpOrder editable window, or take it to 0 to remove it from the order
After you have done your order, hit escape and process.
It will then ask you about Inactive items with movement, 0 and negative balances. Go through this list and verify or change if necessary.
4. Remove Inventory (Use this for removing product from the inventory for whatever reason)
Select reason code first. For example if a product is outdated or damaged beyond sell-ability.
Scan the product. If you selected damaged it will tell you that you are to markdown any product that can be sold. Hit 'T' if it cannot be sold and you just want to remove it.
Escape and process. Note, this will not affect the balances until you process. It's very important.
5. Markdowns (Use this for printing markdown labels, also known as SWIM)
Scan product
You can then edit the price at which you wish to sell the product but no more than the current advertised price.
Then you can edit the number of product you are marking down & number of tags per item. For example, some larger items like dog food have multiple UPC codes on the product so it is necessary you print enough labels to cover all of them.
F5 to print, if you are printing more than 10 it will ask you to verify
6. ISO Ordering (Don't use if you can help it, used for ordering outside poll time without manually opening or creating the order)
I really only ever use the top 5.
Make sure you're always reviewing your orders in ISP. CAO is nowhere near perfect and should be treated as a guideline. If you don't edit your orders, you're going to have a bad time.
Hope this helps.
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Wednesday 18th of February 2015 06:20:29 AM
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Thursday 19th of February 2015 05:37:40 AM
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Thursday 19th of February 2015 05:41:05 AM
F7 will also show you alternate UPCs for an item if you happen to have an item or tag that seems like it ought to fit, but doesn't have the same UPC as the one you're trying to put out. Handy for the feminine hygiene aisle and diapers since they seem to like changing those up every now and then.
And when your in Item maintenance and you do ctrl T that will allow you to make tags. It will let you make a temp tag and will add it too the list too print a real tag the next time the overnight tag people work.
CAO's an easy beast to tame, the whole system basically runs on auto-pilot unless your store/department was in bad shape before you came to it. Keep your allocations (what fits on the shelf) correct so that you can easily keep your balances right, which in turn will keep your out of stocks down unless your minimums are too low. If you have a persistent out of stock scan it and press F9 and look at the MDS (Minimum Day Supply), it should be somewhere between 3 and 7 depending on how much shelf space you have, store sales, backroom space, etc. Too low = OOS, too high = shrink. Increasing the minimum will increase the MDS.
In Citrix you can go Retail Operations -> CAO and look at the various documentation posted. Follow their process as closely as possible for best results with whatever modifications are necessary for your store.
Thanks everyone for their input. This really helps. Also, since this thread is about CAO, anyone who wants to explain what to do in Citrix and on the computer after making an order, and making signs, tags, etc, please feel free to do so. I think this education will be beneficial to us.
Thanks everyone for their input. This really helps. Also, since this thread is about CAO, anyone who wants to explain what to do in Citrix and on the computer after making an order, and making signs, tags, etc, please feel free to do so. I think this education will be beneficial to us.
None of that goes through citrix. I know not much past that, though...
Thanks everyone for their input. This really helps. Also, since this thread is about CAO, anyone who wants to explain what to do in Citrix and on the computer after making an order, and making signs, tags, etc, please feel free to do so. I think this education will be beneficial to us.
None of that goes through citrix. I know not much past that, though...
CAO goes thru ISP. The truck arrival times(transview) and DDP are found on Citrix. Someone mentioned there is CAO how to use info on Citrix.
A long time ago you asked what PU means next to the order info under Control O. If you press enter, it will reveal the meaning most of the time(Product Unavailable).
Thanks everyone for their input. This really helps. Also, since this thread is about CAO, anyone who wants to explain what to do in Citrix and on the computer after making an order, and making signs, tags, etc, please feel free to do so. I think this education will be beneficial to us.
None of that goes through citrix. I know not much past that, though...
CAO goes thru ISP. The truck arrival times(transview) and DDP are found on Citrix. Someone mentioned there is CAO how to use info on Citrix.
A long time ago you asked what PU means next to the order info under Control O. If you press enter, it will reveal the meaning most of the time(Product Unavailable).
Right, I know all that is done through Web pages; I was referring only to the functions in the post I quoted. As for the order adjustment codes, I ended up finding a spreadsheet that lists them all.
You didn't explain about Redisual... Lows and Holes what time it's to be done and the tims that you can order and from who??? Sorry Ii just became the Lead for Nutrition.
You didn't explain about Redisual... Lows and Holes what time it's to be done and the tims that you can order and from who??? Sorry Ii just became the Lead for Nutrition.
When that was posted, those terms you used had not been introduced to us.
Residual scan used to be called Backstock review.
If you are the lead, you should know when your order closes. If you don't, you need to learn quick. Ask your Grocery manager(whoever orders peyton/KMP) when the nutrition order opens and closes. They usually open and close at the same time. The Frozen and dairy orders might have different closing times so take notes.
Some Nutrition products are ordered on the grocery truck. Example: Simple truth 24 packs of water and organic canned corn. Organic Crushed tomatoes are ordered with KMP. Muir Glen tomato paste small cans are ordered by you. Our grocery order opens at 10:15 pm and closes at 3am. I think our KMP opens at 6am and closes at 9am.
Lows & Holes should be done daily after the truck and totes have been ran.
Residual scan should be done after you run the trucks before the backstock is placed on the backstock uboat.
The Nutrition Lead orders what comes in with KMP. Night crew orders what comes in with the grocery truck. My night crew runs all Nutrition that does not come in blue totes. We also get to condition Nutrition... If you need something that comes in on the grocery truck for an endcap, ask the Grocery manager to teach you how to ISO order.
