Time for bed. Up again in like 4 hrs. Figure a pot of coffee will spark me while doing homework.. then a cat nap.. then off to the circus for 2:00-11:00
Been doing the shipping/receiving/stocking thing at the circus for the past few days. Doing runt work and gtting my feet wet on that end of things. I'd have to say, Wally World has a pretty good system in place for logistics and supply chain management. Most of the hiccups and pot holes that I see are on the execution side of things.
Most of the stock is held on the floor rather than the back warehouse. In my store the warehouse is about 10% (or less) of the total building. Most of the warehouse (back room) just holds overstock that cant get onto the shelves or is waiting to get onto the shelves. You want the products on the floor so a customer buys it,
Getting stuff off the trucks and onto the floor is very manually intensive. We have three **** stocking the shelves but not enough bodies to (in my opinion) keep the flow going from the back room and onto the main floor.
I've been working the paper and "chemicals" sections: Garbage bags, sandwich bags, freezer bags, paper plates... Cleaning products (kitchen and bath crap), laundry products (holy $hit there are a ton of different laundry soaps). You'd be amazed on how must of this stuff we go through on a single day.
Pet peeve: the (franking) Glade and AirWick (franking) room deodorizer crap... another WTF do we need so many (franking) sent oils and $hit... Just standardize it... Pick one: Glade, Air Wick, Fabreze, WalMart version. Then offer only like 10 flavors. Do we really need 35 different smells (no exaggeration) from 5 different brands? In a single, a two pack, four pack, eight pack... These things will be the bane of my existence....
...along with the 92.8 different sponges. Franking WalMart brand, 3M, ScotchBrite, O-Cedar, Scrub Daddy... small sponges, large sponges... Each one is different and each one comes in a single, two pack, 4 pack, 8 pack. Then some are just plain rectangles, some are form fit to your hand. Does it really matter? Since we are on the topic... SOS pads.. store brand or SOS. Pink or blue... WTF?
Rant over:
One area that I see off the bat is lack of equipment. Everyone stocking should have handheld scanners, but they are in short supply. With the scanners (about the size of a cell phone) you can scan the UPC bar code on any item and it will tell you exactly what aisle, what shelf, and where on the shelf where that item belongs. If you don't have a scanner, you have to rely on experience from people familiar with where things go or (for a newbie) go on a treasure hunt to figure out where it goes. Sometimes locations change - seasonal items get moved around and standard items get bumped to a different place to make way for the seasonal stuff.
Having a scanner to use will help the stock person (newbie or oldie) find where an item belongs on the shelves. It can easily cut the stocking time in by about 25%.