I am not sure where to begin as the problems with Kroger are more numerous then I believe I can recall in one sitting. This is from the perspective of an associate and I don't know for sure if the problems are my single store, district wide or state or national. List of issues I have noticed over the years:
1. The automated minimum system.
2. The warehouse shorting the store product in every load.
3. The warehouse sending or often distributing out of date or close dated product in a volume an order of magnitude more then the sales for that product in that time frame at the store.
4. Distribution in general causing missive amounts of waist in a department like dairy as the amount distributed is 5x to 10x the possible sales of that product for the store.
5. Elms times not being calibrated correctly to reflect the real world time it takes to complete a task.
6. The management throughout the company are the people who lied about completed tasks in the Elms times shown.
7. Management cutting corners as much as possible/ ignoring the tasks that they can get away with ignoring to put more labor into something else so they can "say" it was done within the scheduled ELMs time.
8. Sets not matching the POG or the physical space on the shelf. So products are listed as active that have no physical shelf space location in the set. I have even seen two active products in the POG with the same exact physical space in the set. one of the items is stocked the other sits on back stock with no shelf location to go to.
9. Management at all levels purposefully looking the other way for above problems. The company has actively taken steps over the years to hide its own problems. This is a miner example: warehouse damage ( which is not a huge problem that I have seen except for eggs being shipped the bottom of pallets being crushed or out of date product being shipped to the store. warehouse damage used to be an option when scanning out waist, the company specifically deleted this option so it is just recorded in general waist making the specific store look worse.
10. "unauthorized items" ( no one has ever given me a good definition of how this is distinct from Inactive or Discontinued products ) being distributed to the store, these by definition have no shelf location to stock.
Expanding on each of the problems I listed above:
1. The automated minimum system: First a quick explanation of the the equation used by the order system and the MIN setting for a product, The system will look at projected sales for the item (this should be set to the number of days between loads) subtract the projected sales total from the balance on hand (BOH) if this is less then the minimum (MIN) bring it the number of cases to resolve this. For each item you can look at how the current MIN translates to how many days supply based on past sales history is being ordered, this Order Minimum is calculated based on the average sales per day. So if your Order Minimum is 1 then your minimum is set to bring in 1 days supply keep in mind this is an average so on a high sales day an order minimum of 1 will be slightly less then 1 days supply for that day and on a low sales day its slightly more. When we had control of our minims I would set the Mins so that all my Order minimums would match the days supply needed to cover the largest volume of sales between two loads. This way I had my product covered and and could just edit the other orders to shave off extra cases I would not need between those days loads. The automated minimum system as far as I can tell is a joke, I have no idea what metric it is using to set MINs before they installed it they made claims that the MINS would be automatically set on Sunday to reflect Wednesdays ad change, this has never occurred and now it does not even seem to be attempting to do so. The department is constantly short on product we need when you go check what the min has been set to the resulting order min is as low as half a days supply so by it's own metrics its only brining in enough product to keep the shelf full for half the day. On other products the min is set to bring in weeks supply ( this is not a huge amount these are often slow movers ) this causes extra cases to come in and waist that overrun the shelf life for the product for the perishable departments. This is connected to problems 7 and 9 no one at the company will address the issues with the system and while they have made changes to it over they years it's still a failed program in my opinion.
2. The warehouse shorting the store product in every load: Every load the store is billed for product it never receives this is especially bad in grocery and dairy. For grocery this sometimes includes whole shippers the store never receives. Some of these cases do randomly show up in the next load, even if this was what the company decided was an acceptable solution it still causes shelves to sit empty with BOHs for cases the store does not have. I would say less then half of these missing cases show up in the next load. What is worse we are told not to fix the numbers for Grocery so some of these shelf locations have sat empty for months. This has been a problem at the store for years and maybe worse now with covid but its also covered up more with covid as the store is filling in these holes with other product. My biggest problem with the dishonesty with which the problem is handled. The internal language of the company has been even been twisted as they refer to shorted cases as misspicks, but misspicks in the past where always an incorrect case being sent in a products place and while misspicks still happen shorted product (no cases sent at all) outnumber this issue. This is also connected to problems 7 and 9 as programs that might pickup the lost sales have been shaved down or done away with totally. It's like the company is more interested in making it appear it's solving problems then actually addressing the issues. My best example of this is we used to do a midday full store scan for out of stocks for every department, this programs was replace with NOOBs which was specific aisles/products now the replenishment scan is ad items only even in dairy where lots of these holes are fast movers that customers expect like coffee creamer.
3. The warehouse sending or often distributing out of date or close dated product in a volume an order of magnitude more then the sales for that product in that time frame at the store and 4 Distribution in general causing missive amounts of waist in a department like dairy as the amount distributed is 5x to 10x the possible sales of that product for the store: Again there is no communication or discernment between cases the store is bringing in over ordering leading to waist and the distribution being forced into the store causing waist. From my experience distribution is more then half of the product that ends up as waist. there is a ^ system now so you can see planed distribution for a product but there is lot of distribution that does not show up with the ^ and when the planed distribution scratches it is the lost sales that make the local store look worse. I have brought up ^ planed distribution that will result in waist to management and nothing is ever communicated or done about it.
I am done with this post for now, and yes I have tried internal channels for years, talking to management, associate surveys and even ethics point to try to address these issues. This post does not directly answer the subject and is more a list of the symptoms. I have found the Kroger culture to be one of management by plausible deniability and it's always pointing fingers at another associate for why something is wrong and never an actual look at the system as a whole that is causing the problem. I don't know which is worse that this is the result of top down incompetence ( the people making programs and decisions have no real world experience of how those programs function.) or they know exactly what they are doing and this really is about making it look like problems are being addressed by hiding the issues even from the company itself.
I can tell you what it all comes down to. Nobody uses any common sense anymore. They'd rather rely on some algorithm. I've worked in the bakery department for over 30 years. Back then we kept handwritten notes from year to year on everything that sold during the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays. At the start of each seaon we knew exactly how much product to order. It came out nearly perfect every year. That all went out the window about 10 years ago, maybe longer. When you've worked there as long as I have, the years start to run together. It was around the time we stopped baking pumpkin pies and started getting in the pre-made ones. If we thought we needed 40 cases. We would get 40 cases plus 20 more cases would be added out. Two days later they would add out another 15 cases. They all end up in our freezer on a green u-boat truck One day they decided to add out 12 cases of spice and red velvet cake donuts. They had to go on a u-boat by themselves. They can't send out just one or two of something. It's a whole pallet or more. Their way of thinking is the more you have the more you sell. Well, there are only so many customers to buy the stuff. We probably have a 3-month supply of Kings Hawaiian rolls in the grocery freezer. We didn't order a single one. They just keep sending stuff without worrying about where we're going o put it. One day I counted 18 u-boats in out bakery freezer. That's the most that will fit. Of those 18 u-boats, between a third and a half of them had product on them that we did not order. To make matters worse, we had to do inventory the Monday after Thanksgining. We'll end marking down the Christmas themed stuff down to just a fraction of its normal cost. Even then we still won't sell it all.
In reality, you have to think about the company as a whole and the problems that are effecting 90% of the stores now. The BIGGEST problem is having knowledgeable people in the stores. All these changes/issues are because there is/has been a huge whole in the hiring process. Yes, finding Associates is at hard, but hiring the wrong Associates only causes larger issues. I personally would rather be down 1-2 Associates then have 1-2 Associates that I had to babysit. Hiring people that really don't want to be here only makes everyone else's jobs harder or causes people to question if they should apply. All these programs are simple to run the store from the corporate level and not allow Store Associates any control of their stores.
If you think back, most Store Managers, Department Manager and long term Clerk had 30+ years of experience. Now with trying to cut costs and deal with retirements, most senior employees now only have 5-10 years with the company, and have been micromanaged with ever program in the last 10 years. Remember ELMS was to make hours more "fair", as previous hours were just scheduled depended on what $$ the Store Manager was given. I personally, knew what to schedule for holidays and what to order to fill the customer needs. Now, we just schedule to complete 90% of the basic task, and hope is gets somewhat completed, Customer Service is the side thought.
How many people have been told to "follow" the plan, but when it completely falls apart its all your fault or you didn't "react" to the changing situation. One thing the company hasn't figured out is customers are not 100% consistent, no "historical" data is going to allow you to run your business 100% of the time. ELMS is completely based on historical data and does not allow Leaders to learn or flex to customers needs, telling an Associate to go faster isn't a solution all the time.
The company flaw is Training, and or actually having a training program. A computer program on how to stock, order, or what GREAT Customer Service is not training, it only indicting the expectation. The only training program, with a little structure is MD1/Leadership Essentials, but that is also lacking.
Some of people that get hired are in the wrong occupation as EUID described.
They used to also auto correct the allocations. The Auto mins was adjusting to a Alloc minus a case plus expected high volume sales... The Allocations were being reset to up to 4 times what the shelf really held. Cao orders to fill based on the allocation. So, fix allocations often. They turned that function off about a month ago here. The auto correct for the minimum is still on and trying to adjust to the trends every couple of weeks. I think that there isn't enough data for the computer to know what to change the minimums to and each store has different holding capacities. I can see the minimums on CAO when I am reviewing the order on the computer. That is a good time to correct them. The reason I suggest that there isn't enough data: I worked in a new store a few years ago. There was no sales history so Cao was trying to order based on the grand opening sales. Grand opening was crazy for 3 months. It took another 6 months to get ordering under control.
We changed warehouses during that grand opening. They were mis picking 20-40% of every order. I will take 5% mis picks/lost products any day of the week.
We get a truck almost every night. The computer will forecast so many days until the next truck. Ours is set to 2 days. We have one night without an order and the computer is set to forecast 3 days beforehand. That means that CAO is ordering a truck to forecast for 2 days when we really get a truck every day. So, for 7 days, the computer forecasts for 13 days. 52 days for a month.
You should be able to see the forecast days on the computer on the upper right hand side. When the order is open, Function 6 will show the forecast days on the bottom right side. F9 will show a MDS(minimum daily supply)#. The MDS will show you how many days the supply should last before you need to reorder. When you adjust the minimum, the MDS# will change. I don't think CAO orders everything based on the Mins anymore. I think most ordering is based on the Allocations.
The "Correct Process" in a perfect scenario:
Night Grocery runs live load 100%. The warehouse sends exactly what we order. Night crew runs 100% of Active back stock before running trucks. At the end of the night, we are supposed to do a residual scan on everything left over from the live load. At that time, we are supposed to adjust Boh, double check Alloc and Min. In the morning, Day crew is supposed to do a Lows & Holes scan. If something is 0, they are supposed to correct it there and then daily. CAO is supposed to order just enough product to keep the shelves stocked but not order back stock. Active back stock carts are only supposed to take 15 minutes to run each night before the live stock is ran.
The Reality:
People constantly call in. The truck does not get ran 100% every night. There is no time to run all Active back stock carts. It would take 2.5 people the entire shift to run all ours at 15 minutes each. Every cart does not need to be ran everyday. Some people throw stuff on the back stock carts because they can't find it even after being told to ask me several times. Some people are not computer literate. Some people are lazy and in a hurry to leave. It would take me 2 hours to scan and pick up every ones' back stock.
There is product in the returns baskets from the front end, product casually scattered in the store aisles, damaged product in Receiving waiting to be reduced, product in current customer carts and Clicklist has products waiting for customer pick ups. The product that Clicklist has does not get removed from the BOH until after the customer pays for it at pickup 2 hours from selecting it. Day Grocery zeros everything out that they don't see. They do not check back stock, shippers, customer carts, endcaps or those other areas.
My job: I reverse 20-50 day crew Boh changes every time I order. I correct 10 +/- Alloc & Mins a week when I run back stock carts that are overflowing. I remove over forecasted items from each order. Due to the high percentage of scratches, I let CAO order what it wants currently. The store is filling up so I will need to be more proactive soon.
Unauthorized product is sometimes a glitch(corrupt file) in the system and sometimes stuff the warehouse is trying to get rid of before it expires. Send question to you Coordinator or post it online(can't remember term for it). Managers use the HUB. Employees use a different App for issues. Sometimes, they are mis picks. If it isn't holiday related, it gets marked down and sold. We keep having resets. Product will be removed from the sets but whoever is supposed to remove it from the planogram, doesn't. If I know it has been removed from the pog, I will inactivate it, 0Min, 0Alloc and send it to be reduced. But, CAO will auto reactivate it when I least expect it....
That might be my fault they removed the choice of why things are removed from inventory. I scanned out a pallet of water as theft one night. District manager or Loss Prevention asked my store manager about it a few days later. lol. That theft option was deleted a week later. Hey, the pallet was there last night but isn't today and wasn't sold. Must be theft. I think I was mistaken in what I saw. Although, we have at least a pallet of water casually stolen each week because no one checks Bottom Of Basket and the lane hawks don't work. I count pallets daily and can see the missing cases daily. I think you can change reason for removing from inventory using F2, Might work in other modes too(check help menu next time). Other than that, everything is scanned out as Data Integrity.
As for Elms: I used to be able to see how Elms allocated hours for every job in Grocery. I don't have access to that data anymore. I have watched how the TSG, DDP and Survey has changed over the years. Tasks keep being added, but time for necessary steps keep getting forgotten. We used to be given specific time to break down trucks, receive trucks, condition store, run back stock, ect. Now, all anyone sees is Grocery runs 60 cases an hour. 10 night workers can run 4800 cases a night without overtime. I am lucky if I can get 12 people to run 2400 cases. But, we were supposed to run directly off pallets because the pallets were aisle friendly. Well, a 4' 80# female can not drag a 1 ton, 8' tall pallet around narrow aisles especially with the worn out pallet jacks. Pallets are not aisle friendly. The orders have grown exponentially. Once the orders reach a certain amount, we are over capacity of what we can get done before store opens.
I would enjoy seeing how they keep the Grocery Department operating in the $3m store in Alaska. I heard they get a huge shipment (shipping containers?) once a week(or month) instead of daily trucks.
I enjoy my job at Kroger and I am compensated well enough. I don't whine and complain about my job because I know things could go from bad worse at any moment. Take Covid19 for example. I think I am appreciated but that just might be word psychology from the managers to get me to do more. I do give my subtle opinions and suggestions to my managers. It is up to them to either act on it or ignore it.
Some of people that get hired are in the wrong occupation as EUID described.
They used to also auto correct the allocations. The Auto mins was adjusting to a Alloc minus a case plus expected high volume sales... The Allocations were being reset to up to 4 times what the shelf really held. Cao orders to fill based on the allocation. So, fix allocations often. They turned that function off about a month ago here. The auto correct for the minimum is still on and trying to adjust to the trends every couple of weeks. I think that there isn't enough data for the computer to know what to change the minimums to and each store has different holding capacities. I can see the minimums on CAO when I am reviewing the order on the computer. That is a good time to correct them. The reason I suggest that there isn't enough data: I worked in a new store a few years ago. There was no sales history so Cao was trying to order based on the grand opening sales. Grand opening was crazy for 3 months. It took another 6 months to get ordering under control.
We changed warehouses during that grand opening. They were mis picking 20-40% of every order. I will take 5% mis picks/lost products any day of the week.
We get a truck almost every night. The computer will forecast so many days until the next truck. Ours is set to 2 days. We have one night without an order and the computer is set to forecast 3 days beforehand. That means that CAO is ordering a truck to forecast for 2 days when we really get a truck every day. So, for 7 days, the computer forecasts for 13 days. 52 days for a month.
You should be able to see the forecast days on the computer on the upper right hand side. When the order is open, Function 6 will show the forecast days on the bottom right side. F9 will show a MDS(minimum daily supply)#. The MDS will show you how many days the supply should last before you need to reorder. When you adjust the minimum, the MDS# will change. I don't think CAO orders everything based on the Mins anymore. I think most ordering is based on the Allocations.
The "Correct Process" in a perfect scenario:
Night Grocery runs live load 100%. The warehouse sends exactly what we order. Night crew runs 100% of Active back stock before running trucks. At the end of the night, we are supposed to do a residual scan on everything left over from the live load. At that time, we are supposed to adjust Boh, double check Alloc and Min. In the morning, Day crew is supposed to do a Lows & Holes scan. If something is 0, they are supposed to correct it there and then daily. CAO is supposed to order just enough product to keep the shelves stocked but not order back stock. Active back stock carts are only supposed to take 15 minutes to run each night before the live stock is ran.
The Reality:
People constantly call in. The truck does not get ran 100% every night. There is no time to run all Active back stock carts. It would take 2.5 people the entire shift to run all ours at 15 minutes each. Every cart does not need to be ran everyday. Some people throw stuff on the back stock carts because they can't find it even after being told to ask me several times. Some people are not computer literate. Some people are lazy and in a hurry to leave. It would take me 2 hours to scan and pick up every ones' back stock.
There is product in the returns baskets from the front end, product casually scattered in the store aisles, damaged product in Receiving waiting to be reduced, product in current customer carts and Clicklist has products waiting for customer pick ups. The product that Clicklist has does not get removed from the BOH until after the customer pays for it at pickup 2 hours from selecting it. Day Grocery zeros everything out that they don't see. They do not check back stock, shippers, customer carts, endcaps or those other areas.
My job: I reverse 20-50 day crew Boh changes every time I order. I correct 10 +/- Alloc & Mins a week when I run back stock carts that are overflowing. I remove over forecasted items from each order. Due to the high percentage of scratches, I let CAO order what it wants currently. The store is filling up so I will need to be more proactive soon.
Unauthorized product is sometimes a glitch(corrupt file) in the system and sometimes stuff the warehouse is trying to get rid of before it expires. Send question to you Coordinator or post it online(can't remember term for it). Managers use the HUB. Employees use a different App for issues. Sometimes, they are mis picks. If it isn't holiday related, it gets marked down and sold. We keep having resets. Product will be removed from the sets but whoever is supposed to remove it from the planogram, doesn't. If I know it has been removed from the pog, I will inactivate it, 0Min, 0Alloc and send it to be reduced. But, CAO will auto reactivate it when I least expect it....
That might be my fault they removed the choice of why things are removed from inventory. I scanned out a pallet of water as theft one night. District manager or Loss Prevention asked my store manager about it a few days later. lol. That theft option was deleted a week later. Hey, the pallet was there last night but isn't today and wasn't sold. Must be theft. I think I was mistaken in what I saw. Although, we have at least a pallet of water casually stolen each week because no one checks Bottom Of Basket and the lane hawks don't work. I count pallets daily and can see the missing cases daily. I think you can change reason for removing from inventory using F2, Might work in other modes too(check help menu next time). Other than that, everything is scanned out as Data Integrity.
As for Elms: I used to be able to see how Elms allocated hours for every job in Grocery. I don't have access to that data anymore. I have watched how the TSG, DDP and Survey has changed over the years. Tasks keep being added, but time for necessary steps keep getting forgotten. We used to be given specific time to break down trucks, receive trucks, condition store, run back stock, ect. Now, all anyone sees is Grocery runs 60 cases an hour. 10 night workers can run 4800 cases a night without overtime. I am lucky if I can get 12 people to run 2400 cases. But, we were supposed to run directly off pallets because the pallets were aisle friendly. Well, a 4' 80# female can not drag a 1 ton, 8' tall pallet around narrow aisles especially with the worn out pallet jacks. Pallets are not aisle friendly. The orders have grown exponentially. Once the orders reach a certain amount, we are over capacity of what we can get done before store opens.
I would enjoy seeing how they keep the Grocery Department operating in the $3m store in Alaska. I heard they get a huge shipment (shipping containers?) once a week(or month) instead of daily trucks.
I enjoy my job at Kroger and I am compensated well enough. I don't whine and complain about my job because I know things could go from bad worse at any moment. Take Covid19 for example. I think I am appreciated but that just might be word psychology from the managers to get me to do more. I do give my subtle opinions and suggestions to my managers. It is up to them to either act on it or ignore it.
What Division do you work in? I would guess your water issue might also be a random PLU the FE is using to not physically scan the UPC. Your water issue might also be the stocking of the single Kroger waters on the front end.
What Division do you work in? I would guess your water issue might also be a random PLU the FE is using to not physically scan the UPC. Your water issue might also be the stocking of the single Kroger waters on the front end.
I prefer not to give too much identifying info. North East USA.
All varieties combined is at least a pallet a week loss. We lose about 5 Nestle Pure Life water 24 packs a week. They are slow sellers and are not in the singles cooler.
In reality, you have to think about the company as a whole and the problems that are effecting 90% of the stores now. The BIGGEST problem is having knowledgeable people in the stores. All these changes/issues are because there is/has been a huge whole in the hiring process. Yes, finding Associates is at hard, but hiring the wrong Associates only causes larger issues. I personally would rather be down 1-2 Associates then have 1-2 Associates that I had to babysit. Hiring people that really don't want to be here only makes everyone else's jobs harder or causes people to question if they should apply. All these programs are simple to run the store from the corporate level and not allow Store Associates any control of their stores.
If you think back, most Store Managers, Department Manager and long term Clerk had 30+ years of experience. Now with trying to cut costs and deal with retirements, most senior employees now only have 5-10 years with the company, and have been micromanaged with ever program in the last 10 years. Remember ELMS was to make hours more "fair", as previous hours were just scheduled depended on what $$ the Store Manager was given. I personally, knew what to schedule for holidays and what to order to fill the customer needs. Now, we just schedule to complete 90% of the basic task, and hope is gets somewhat completed, Customer Service is the side thought.
How many people have been told to "follow" the plan, but when it completely falls apart its all your fault or you didn't "react" to the changing situation. One thing the company hasn't figured out is customers are not 100% consistent, no "historical" data is going to allow you to run your business 100% of the time. ELMS is completely based on historical data and does not allow Leaders to learn or flex to customers needs, telling an Associate to go faster isn't a solution all the time.
The company flaw is Training, and or actually having a training program. A computer program on how to stock, order, or what GREAT Customer Service is not training, it only indicting the expectation. The only training program, with a little structure is MD1/Leadership Essentials, but that is also lacking.
Well if Kroger didnt make it to were people quit it wouldnt be a problem. The problem is Kroger period
What Division do you work in? I would guess your water issue might also be a random PLU the FE is using to not physically scan the UPC. Your water issue might also be the stocking of the single Kroger waters on the front end.
I prefer not to give too much identifying info. North East USA.
All varieties combined is at least a pallet a week loss. We lose about 5 Nestle Pure Life water 24 packs a week. They are slow sellers and are not in the singles cooler.
Using random PLU would explain a lot.
Dont give out info man that guy asking us a known snitch on here.Just like the higher ups he prefers to see associates struggle but when it comes to himself he seems to think hes entitled
What Division do you work in? I would guess your water issue might also be a random PLU the FE is using to not physically scan the UPC. Your water issue might also be the stocking of the single Kroger waters on the front end.
I prefer not to give too much identifying info. North East USA.
All varieties combined is at least a pallet a week loss. We lose about 5 Nestle Pure Life water 24 packs a week. They are slow sellers and are not in the singles cooler.
Using random PLU would explain a lot.
Dont give out info man that guy asking us a known snitch on here.Just like the higher ups he prefers to see associates struggle but when it comes to himself he seems to think hes entitled
Exactly. IUD___Unknown is a vomitous dog t wat who hasn't had p u s s y since p u s s y had him. His mama always mad at him cuz he always stealin her panties.
Some of people that get hired are in the wrong occupation as EUID described.
They used to also auto correct the allocations. The Auto mins was adjusting to a Alloc minus a case plus expected high volume sales... The Allocations were being reset to up to 4 times what the shelf really held. Cao orders to fill based on the allocation. So, fix allocations often. They turned that function off about a month ago here. The auto correct for the minimum is still on and trying to adjust to the trends every couple of weeks. I think that there isn't enough data for the computer to know what to change the minimums to and each store has different holding capacities. I can see the minimums on CAO when I am reviewing the order on the computer. That is a good time to correct them. The reason I suggest that there isn't enough data: I worked in a new store a few years ago. There was no sales history so Cao was trying to order based on the grand opening sales. Grand opening was crazy for 3 months. It took another 6 months to get ordering under control.
We changed warehouses during that grand opening. They were mis picking 20-40% of every order. I will take 5% mis picks/lost products any day of the week.
We get a truck almost every night. The computer will forecast so many days until the next truck. Ours is set to 2 days. We have one night without an order and the computer is set to forecast 3 days beforehand. That means that CAO is ordering a truck to forecast for 2 days when we really get a truck every day. So, for 7 days, the computer forecasts for 13 days. 52 days for a month.
You should be able to see the forecast days on the computer on the upper right hand side. When the order is open, Function 6 will show the forecast days on the bottom right side. F9 will show a MDS(minimum daily supply)#. The MDS will show you how many days the supply should last before you need to reorder. When you adjust the minimum, the MDS# will change. I don't think CAO orders everything based on the Mins anymore. I think most ordering is based on the Allocations.
The "Correct Process" in a perfect scenario:
Night Grocery runs live load 100%. The warehouse sends exactly what we order. Night crew runs 100% of Active back stock before running trucks. At the end of the night, we are supposed to do a residual scan on everything left over from the live load. At that time, we are supposed to adjust Boh, double check Alloc and Min. In the morning, Day crew is supposed to do a Lows & Holes scan. If something is 0, they are supposed to correct it there and then daily. CAO is supposed to order just enough product to keep the shelves stocked but not order back stock. Active back stock carts are only supposed to take 15 minutes to run each night before the live stock is ran.
The Reality:
People constantly call in. The truck does not get ran 100% every night. There is no time to run all Active back stock carts. It would take 2.5 people the entire shift to run all ours at 15 minutes each. Every cart does not need to be ran everyday. Some people throw stuff on the back stock carts because they can't find it even after being told to ask me several times. Some people are not computer literate. Some people are lazy and in a hurry to leave. It would take me 2 hours to scan and pick up every ones' back stock.
There is product in the returns baskets from the front end, product casually scattered in the store aisles, damaged product in Receiving waiting to be reduced, product in current customer carts and Clicklist has products waiting for customer pick ups. The product that Clicklist has does not get removed from the BOH until after the customer pays for it at pickup 2 hours from selecting it. Day Grocery zeros everything out that they don't see. They do not check back stock, shippers, customer carts, endcaps or those other areas.
My job: I reverse 20-50 day crew Boh changes every time I order. I correct 10 +/- Alloc & Mins a week when I run back stock carts that are overflowing. I remove over forecasted items from each order. Due to the high percentage of scratches, I let CAO order what it wants currently. The store is filling up so I will need to be more proactive soon.
Unauthorized product is sometimes a glitch(corrupt file) in the system and sometimes stuff the warehouse is trying to get rid of before it expires. Send question to you Coordinator or post it online(can't remember term for it). Managers use the HUB. Employees use a different App for issues. Sometimes, they are mis picks. If it isn't holiday related, it gets marked down and sold. We keep having resets. Product will be removed from the sets but whoever is supposed to remove it from the planogram, doesn't. If I know it has been removed from the pog, I will inactivate it, 0Min, 0Alloc and send it to be reduced. But, CAO will auto reactivate it when I least expect it....
That might be my fault they removed the choice of why things are removed from inventory. I scanned out a pallet of water as theft one night. District manager or Loss Prevention asked my store manager about it a few days later. lol. That theft option was deleted a week later. Hey, the pallet was there last night but isn't today and wasn't sold. Must be theft. I think I was mistaken in what I saw. Although, we have at least a pallet of water casually stolen each week because no one checks Bottom Of Basket and the lane hawks don't work. I count pallets daily and can see the missing cases daily. I think you can change reason for removing from inventory using F2, Might work in other modes too(check help menu next time). Other than that, everything is scanned out as Data Integrity.
As for Elms: I used to be able to see how Elms allocated hours for every job in Grocery. I don't have access to that data anymore. I have watched how the TSG, DDP and Survey has changed over the years. Tasks keep being added, but time for necessary steps keep getting forgotten. We used to be given specific time to break down trucks, receive trucks, condition store, run back stock, ect. Now, all anyone sees is Grocery runs 60 cases an hour. 10 night workers can run 4800 cases a night without overtime. I am lucky if I can get 12 people to run 2400 cases. But, we were supposed to run directly off pallets because the pallets were aisle friendly. Well, a 4' 80# female can not drag a 1 ton, 8' tall pallet around narrow aisles especially with the worn out pallet jacks. Pallets are not aisle friendly. The orders have grown exponentially. Once the orders reach a certain amount, we are over capacity of what we can get done before store opens.
I would enjoy seeing how they keep the Grocery Department operating in the $3m store in Alaska. I heard they get a huge shipment (shipping containers?) once a week(or month) instead of daily trucks.
I enjoy my job at Kroger and I am compensated well enough. I don't whine and complain about my job because I know things could go from bad worse at any moment. Take Covid19 for example. I think I am appreciated but that just might be word psychology from the managers to get me to do more. I do give my subtle opinions and suggestions to my managers. It is up to them to either act on it or ignore it.
What Division do you work in? I would guess your water issue might also be a random PLU the FE is using to not physically scan the UPC. Your water issue might also be the stocking of the single Kroger waters on the front end.
This is exactly why I don't work there anymore. You seem to have a great attitude for a grocery manager. Most of them are so beat down from bullsheet like this that they just go in, find the paper aisle, stock it, scan a few things on each aisle and make sure to edit view the order, then throw employees under the bus the next morning when they are walking with the store manager if the load didn't get put out. the high ups expect the impossible and just continuously keep adding on without giving you more help to make up for it. It is probably the greediest company I have ever worked for and I have been in several different retail businesses.
