New to night stocking and would like some insight. My store gets 4 trucks a week at about 2000 pieces per load. We are an absolute mess at night with the freight lead in charge. There are only 4 of us and the grocery manager comes in in the mornings and scans and picks up backstock at 6am while we are still stocking and have trash everywhere. We can't even get the store faced and he recommends instead of spreading out to different aisles, we should all team up on each aisle and when done pick up backstock, face, and then move to the next and repeat the process. I feel like we would probably be a lot cleaner and get done quicker but have yet to try this. Thoughts?
That is a lot of stock for 4 people. How much in sales does your store do a week?
General rule of thumb is 40 cases an hour running stock and conditioning. In an 8 hour shift, you work 7.5 hours and get two 15 minute breaks. That means each person should be running about 300 cases a night and getting the store conditioned. 1200 cases for 4 guys! You need 2.67 more guys on your crew for those truck nights. :)
I have been on nights for the last 8 years and have seen the store change volume wise. It is hard to keep up with what is expected. They have narrowed a lot of sets and added many products.
I am a night manager. Some stores have night leads. I like working alone. Some people work well together. If you have too many people in one aisle, there is too much talking or bumping into each other.
Technically, we are not supposed to be spotting product. We are supposed to run directly off the pallets and conditioning later.
My crew and I are having trouble getting the work done too. Currently, we spot most of the store but I am thinking about forcing everyone to learn how to work off a pallet next year.
2: Condiments, pasta, pasta sauce, international foods.
3: Bake aisle.
4: Cereal.
5: Pringles, pop corn, nuts.
9: Soda water aisle.
10: Juice.
11: Water.
14: Soap.
15 Pet food.
16: Paper towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, trash bags and baggies.
On Grocery night(01):
While I am ordering, I have my crew spot 1-5. I have everyone work 1 together on most nights because it is a killer aisle. After that, I usually have everyone work separate aisles.
After I finish ordering, the crew is running and conditioning 1-5. I will spot pet food cans, run pet food bags, run water and 12 packs soda off pallet, spot soda water 2l and juice. I normally run and condition soda and water aisles. I will answer Fast Alerts , receive a Nabisco, unload the grocery truck, sometimes unload Meat truck, receive two other drivers in the middle of this catastrophe I will run the soap aisle off the pallet. I leave paper to do last. When 1-5 are done, I will send one person to finish pet food and condition soap. I usually send 2 people to finish juice. If I have enough people, I will send another person to run and condition paper. If not, I run and condition paper.
On Kmp night(69). I have my crew spot entire store. All aisles except #2 are a usually a 1 person aisle. I will start in 16 and work down. I assign each person the aisles I want them to get done.
It kind of works most of the time. After the holidays, I want to try something different.
I see 5-8 hours burned up every night just spotting. I would rather teach everyone to run off of pallets. The only two aisles that it doesn't work well in for me is paper and cereal. The rest of the aisles are not too bad running off a pallet.
How do you guys try to run your trucks?
You have to find what works best for your crew. Try something different until you find something that works.
Added: We have 3 x 01 trucks and 3 x 69 trucks a week alternating days. And one day to run and scan all backstock. We do not run chips, cookies, crackers, blue totes or baby products unless we have extra time to help day crew get caught up. 01 trucks are from 1000 to 1700 cases. 69 trucks are from 350 to 700 cases. Most times we have a better workflow for the 01 truck.
The purpose for spotting is to help run and condition faster. But, when I add up the time, we lose more time than we save. I can sort 69 onto Lcarts in about 2 hours if I can find any. It takes my crew about 6 hours to spot entire store. Start looking at your DDPs to see if you have enough people for the job each night. EnterpriseCitrix -->Applications-->DDP. Select Daily and truck you are running. That shows only the time it takes to run the stock. 60 cases an hour for 01 and 45 cases an hour for 69.(For running cases only. Does not include conditioning) Each store takes anywhere from 7-10 hours to condition properly. We do not get time for spotting ever. Receiving, ordering, Fast alerts, filling backstock H2o daily, running all backstock daily and conditioning time magically comes out of thin air.
It ticks me off when my day grocery manager asks me why we aren't getting more done. I am not sure if he is serious or kidding sometimes but he asks at the wrong f..ing time. I don't think he has a clue. I think he expects me to do his tasks on top of my own. I have even had to explain to co managers about the DDP. Well, "23 hours to run stock, 9 hours to condition store, 1 hour for fast alerts and receive 2 small trucks, 3 hours to receive the grocery truck and return salvage because the power pallet jack is broken for the last two weeks, 2.5 hours to order, 1 hour to clean up backroom(because daycrew left crap everywhere) and change the bale and 1.5 hours to fill all water. I have 4 people here scheduled a total of 25 hours to get 43 hours worth of work done. And, I was supposed to run all the backstock(22 hours) too!?" We actually get close to done minus backstock on those nights with very little OT. My crew can hustle but do not always.
I have 7 people including myself on nightcrew. It looks like the managers are trying to schedule 5 people a night but only three of us are full time and getting 8 hours. I have 2 people that have been with Kroger for over 20 years and know how to milk the system. I have 2 people that have been with Kroger for 4 years and call in too often on the worst nights. I have 3 people that have been with Kroger under a year. 1 works ok but likes to call in too. The 2 others are in semi-retirement and have no incentive to move fast or are unable to move faster.
I love my job and like the rat race to get everything done daily. Most of my crew does not want to be there and aren't as crazy about working for Kroger as I am.
My store is being rebuilt as a market place(1m plus with a gas station). If I play my cards right, I might be the night manager there. But, the workload will be double to keep the machine running smoothly.
-- Edited by Anonymouse1 on Thursday 24th of December 2015 03:47:49 PM
-- Edited by Anonymouse1 on Thursday 24th of December 2015 03:54:09 PM
-- Edited by Anonymouse1 on Thursday 24th of December 2015 04:12:31 PM
Thanks for the response. Dry grocery does over 45k dollars a day and we, the grocery dept, are given anywhere from 300-350 hours a week. That includes night crew, frozen, dairy, and 1 guy in the daytime filling fast movers and working specialty. Seems extremely light for the amount of business! Those sales exclude dairy and frozen. The produce dept gets 250+ hours and they only do 6-7k a day. That math doesn't add up hours wise!!
So here is how it goes at my store most nights. We have 6 stockers plus the manager who works overnight with us but hardly ever has time to help us stock and most truck nights we have 4-5 stockers working. Our store is laid out like this:
1: international
2: condiments, canned meat, olives, pickles
3. pasta, rice
4. canned soup/veges/fruit
5. coffee, tea, baking mixes
6. bake (flour, sugar, spices, etc.)
7. cereal
8. trash bags, lunch bags, peanut butter/jelly
9. paper towels, toliet paper
11. soap
12. pet food
15. snacks (peanuts, cookies, crackers)
16. chips, water
17. soda, juice
A "typical" night (how it should work) goes like this. I come in an hour early and bring the whole truck out onto the floor as we have no room in receiving to break anything down. Then we all have our assigned aisles that we work on stocking and conditioning for the rest of the time we are there. It should be about 1 person for every 2-3 aisles but it hardly ever turns out that way as we have some really lazy people who don't want to work as a team. I don't spot anything and work straight off pallets as I think it is quicker (the less times you touch a box, the better IMO) but some of the guys will spot everything or a good portion of it before they start actually putting cases on the shelves. And right now, especially with the holiday season, we don't always finish the truck in one night. We will sometimes have Monday night's peyton (69, etc) sitting in the back until Friday/Saturday (we get two peyton a week - Monday night and Friday night). Two nights a week I am "in charge" because the manager is off and then I get to answer fast alerts, do a frozen order one of the two nights, and receive/put away what ever trucks show up (usually it's just one meat truck).
Thanks for the response. Dry grocery does over 45k dollars a day and we, the grocery dept, are given anywhere from 300-350 hours a week. That includes night crew, frozen, dairy, and 1 guy in the daytime filling fast movers and working specialty. Seems extremely light for the amount of business! Those sales exclude dairy and frozen. The produce dept gets 250+ hours and they only do 6-7k a day. That math doesn't add up hours wise!!
If those numbers are accurate, they are highly flawed. We do about 42k in grocery every saturday/sunday and we do about 550-575k/wk in sales w/o fuel, so that means our store does less total volume than yours. Our grocery(just dry grocery + DSD receiver gets 310 hours a week, if you count frozen(~70) and dairy(~96) that's around 480-500 total grocery and we certainly do NOT have extra hours, things are very tight as is. Your situation is impossible. If you have citrix access, check your percent effective by going to ELMS. The hours you're given don't make any sense to me. Extrapolating probable average store volume I'd put you around 750k/wk compared to our 550. We have a store that does that and dry grocery alone has 400 and they never get done.
Also another thing, if you have 4 trucks averaging 2000, ask your store manager to add a truck. Your volume is high enough that it'd make a lot more sense to do so, since 2000 is encroaching on a full trailer and you want some wiggle room.
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Thursday 24th of December 2015 10:42:30 PM
The percent effective is laughable in elms. I forgot to mention those hours also include the 40 for dsd lol. Store does do around 750k a week in sales. It truly does feel like an insurmountable task. He'll we don't even have bays/rafters in our backroom lol. I don't know how the grocery manager even maintains it to be honest. It is quite clean most of time some how.
