Stockroom Locator

Joined: 07 Aug 2008 Posts: 61

How are all of you doing with the new Stockroom Locator feature on the SNC? Have any of your stores made the jump yet, and if so is it easy to get on board? My store hasn't started the process yet, and we're nearing the final week to get it done.

I think it's going to end up being a pain having to carry a SNC around if you're thinking of selling any merchandise that's NOT on the floor, but I could be wrong.

Joined: 15 Jan 2006 Posts: 119

Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 583

I have to admit that I totally busted up laughing when they told me about this little project.

Yeah. Right. Uh huh.

Doh!

Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Posts: 222

The project is a royal PITA to set up. If you have only a week to get it done, there's virtually no way you are going to be compliant with the program that quickly. My store is about 80% converted to the new system after about 2 1/2 weeks of raw conversion. It will still take another week to finish the remaining stockrooms.

First, you have create a planogram of every area in the store that can hold stock. Then you have to draw the planogram for each of those areas and label every potential row and shelf that stock can be placed onto the planogram. Once that is done, you have to print out stickers for every area you conceived on the planogram for each area and label every row, shelf, and position that stock can be placed on. Then, comes the painful task of scanning EVERY piece of merchandise in every stock area and assigning every SKU a dedicated position on the planogram and report that location to the SNC (For example, a 3 prong range power cord goes in Stockroom #4, at Area 2, Row 6, Position 5).

While you are dealing with the inventory labeling nightmare, you have to get everyone in the store to start using SNCs as part of handling inventory. That will be problematic in its own right. Then, you have the limited number of SNCs issue. As per corportate designs, you need to have every SNC in the building functional. Everything that is supposed to be done before the store opens on the SNC has to be done because the SNCs have to be recycled to the selling departments during store hours. As part of the program, management is supposed to plan and distrubute SNCs to the appropriate people across the span of a work day.

The only good thing I can report from this mess is that a salesperson knows for sure that an item is in stock when using the locator program, and exactly where that item is in the store. Otherwise, its a royal pain in the ass.

Joined: 09 Jan 2009 Posts: 33

It's just another procedure to slow us down. The benefits aren't worth the amount of time it takes to go through.

So now instead of me grabbing an armful of items that we need for the sales floor (some off which we completely ran out of), this new procedure will take so long that it won't even be worth doing. Only when we have a large block of free time or when we're ordered to do so will we be pulling stock from the stockroom because it won't be worth the amount off extra time that it'll take. This is not good.

I anticipate lower levels of stock on the sales floor in the immediate future. Either the sales floor stock will fall or the time spent on our other duties will have to be cut quite a bit. I don't see how our work hours could increase because our sales figures are still falling.

Joined: 07 Aug 2008 Posts: 61

Joined: 02 Jan 2009 Posts: 35

wow..

this is so stupid.

We have like 7 sncs in our store.

How do they expect the leads to get display dispositions, etc done and the signing team to get the ad up and rtv and mpu and everyone else that needs them get their work done while being compliant with this new procedure?

sometimes all i can do is just shake my head.

Joined: 05 Dec 2007 Posts: 525

I can understand the reasoning behind this but it takes to long with what short of time we do have.

Right now the rec. people took the time to start this and last week someone took the store locatore of the snc. So now we don't know if all that work is coming back on or if they have to do it all over again.

Joined: 07 Jan 2004 Posts: 293

There's no way our stock area is even close to being ready for this... and whatever snc I can find.. that's working.. I use it all day... what with OOS... planograms... requesting signs.. when the signriter is working that is.. checking prices for the idiot customers...

Not a hope in hell this will ever work

Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 124

Guy sold a vacuum cleaner the other day, soon afterwards, couple of the recieving guys came out to the floor all panicky, wanting to know where said vacuum was. One recieving guy said: "It's not where our locator says it should be..." Salesman told him: "I just went back there, climbed a ladder, and put my hand on it....it's there..." Now, there's a freaking top notch system for you....

Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 135 Location: Deep Space 9

Well, we got it set up in my store. The jury is still out on it, it has its good points and bad points. It will help on inventory day IF it is programmed right. We are already having to go back and redo sections because things aren't right. I can see where it could save time looking for a certain item, but with a small stock area, I'm not sure it was really necessary. I have been telling salespeople when showing them how to use the system that until YOU feel comfortable that the system is correct to still go to the back room and put your eyes on an item just to make sure. They say this system will save time because the salesman can just look it up to see if we have it, but if I were a salesman I would probably go look. Taking a couple minutes to look sure beats having a customer come back and say that the guys at MPU said you don't have it.
I guess my real question is this: Why do we need ANOTHER inventory control system? We already have RIM and RTI. We all know how accurate they are.
One last thing. How many applications can the SNC handle? Is it possible that this system is overloaded? It would explain why they keep going down.

Joined: 07 Aug 2008 Posts: 61

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 6300

searssup -Sears trying to keep up with Joneses

That about sums it up. They've said the samething about employee pay for years at this point.

They've tried to implement a don't leave the floor for a stock/count check on big ticket in the past. You were supposed to call MPU which was informed it was their job to check on-hands. It never worked in our store and even the premiere store of district was only able to keep it going around 2 weeks. Transfer sales were really easy for those 2 weeks.

Walmart and Target are more successfull because of price and the perception of having the lowest price. Maybe more efficient logistics from the supply/inventory side. But it aint about stockroom locators.

Joined: 05 Jul 2008 Posts: 169

On the Kmart end we had to do the stockroom locator a few years ago. The biggest problem, why it did not work well, payroll and training.

There were not enough people, not enough people to train new hires and not enough RMU's to scan the merchandise. If they even work for more than an hour. The stockroom sometimes would be crammed with merchandise, and it would sit with product until they expected a visit and then they would put a small group of people on it.

They also demanded too many tasks to be done by too few people. Siging, mark-downs, resets, metrics (credit,...), merchandising (endcaps and displays properly put out). Then add this on top of the scanning to check pricing.

It would have been a great thing if properly executed.
But when you have people working only ten hours a week and they have no idea what a stock room locator is, nor are they allowed to scan anything in because they are not given numbers to do such, either things get jammed into the bins or taken out with no corrections. Have that happen several times a week per department and it is a mess. They just do things half-assed.

We also had alot of food to deal with and alot of that was filled overnight when the electronic equipment would not operate for several hours while the system updated.

Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 82

Years ago they used this at Woolworths, didn't they?

Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 481

this was in use at least 8 years or so ago when I worked at Target.

If they implement it correctly, it'll be a very good way to manage inventory.

I have no faith that they will, however.

At target, anyways, it was always a good way to keep the floor full. You just would shoot a batch of inventory to fill holes. The guys in the back would pull the items, and you would fill the floor.

Or if an item was sold, they'd pull batches a few times a day, and bring out more stuff. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 72

This only works if EVERYONE keeps up their end. Yesterday, register showed us having 4 Panny 54" Tvs, the SNC said ZERO. That was after spending 10 minutes logging into the SNC and waiting for it to connect, and the customer looking at me weird. I went back and actually looked, we had 1. Which took another 15 minutes. Would have been easier, quicker, and less stress on the customer to just go look, like I have always done.

The MPU guys see a TV no different than a pair of bedroom shoes. Missed one, oops. For me, missed one is a big deal. And it was explained to me in much detail why we keep showing +amounts on stuff we do not have. OK, you keep hiring new folks, almost daily, they do not know how to do returns... and they do not need training, or so they think...

I just don't get this. It's like we are eating ourselves alive. Forget the economy and such, SHC is doing it's best to destroy itself from within. Anyone that survived the last F&F in BC can attest to that fact.

I do not mind implementing the SNC stock procedure, but, so far its not working. And when you are talking a $2500 sale, there is NO way I will rely on it. If I sold bedroom shoes, sure... no commission, who cares? Even the customer wouldn't, is only a few bucks.

Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 583

I don't know about that, mudsales, regarding the bedroom slipper comment...People have made me call stores up to 100 miles away looking for a certain tee shirt, dress shirt, pants, etc even after I try to get them to store to web it. Or store to home....or whatever it's called these days. Every sale is important.

Anyhow, yeaaaaah, I don't see this stockroom locator thing lasting very long. I understand the intentions behind it and I think that if we were even able to correctly implement it and usually had reliable tech on our side, it would be a great system and tool to have. So far...nope.

Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 148

Softline MCA's have to scan every pair of panties they stock on floor. In fact, if a softline item has been "located" in the wharehouse, it has to be scanned before being brought to the floor.

This wastes more of the precious time we have to do tasks. We are getting so much product, we can't get it to the floor before they locate it. Then it has to be scanned by mca's before it can be brought to floor.

Joined: 15 Jan 2006 Posts: 119

My first experience with the "stockroom locator" over in shoes once it had been completely set up.

"fatal exception"

That was the SNC all day. Hitting the 'okay' button caused the SNC to reboot, whereupon it would just repeat "fatal exception" and go into a vicious cycle. Taking the battery our for two hours and putting it back didn't help at all.

We ended up having to write down everything we took in/out of the stockroom on a piece of paper (shelf #, item #) so that we could go back at a later time/date once the SNC decided to start working again.

Great system guys! Rock on!

Joined: 13 Jun 2008 Posts: 195

Or you could have gone into the system on the workstation and done it all there.

BTW, if you got a fatal exception error, which is independent of stock locater itself and is a SNC issue, why did you not get another SNC?

Joined: 15 Jan 2006 Posts: 119

As if we have tons of SNCs laying around just waiting to be used by people...

We have a very limited number of them. In fact, we still don't even have enough so that all the signing people have one to do their jobs on Sunday. It's a miracle that I was able to get one for my job in shoes. There were no others to borrow when this one was dorked up (which happened right as I logged into the stock locator menu option).

I didn't even remember we could use the workstations to do it. I've never actually logged into the SNC system using that method before. And I believe I've heard, on here, that it may be unreliable(? I don't know, I might have misread).

Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 583

It's just http://snc I think on the computers.

I thought the computer was more reliable and waaaay faster. It's always much faster for me when I use it to take out exceptions in takedown/setup.

Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 72

The computer is faster and more reliable. The only prob is the major login time, and having to manually type in all the stock numbers and location numbers for each item you are moving. And those location numbers really make my head hurt, lol.

Joined: 09 Jan 2009 Posts: 33

Anyone else having the problem of the location stickers ink coming off due to stock movement against them?

Some of the numbers on the stickers in my store are becoming harder to read because pieces of the numbers are rubbing off. I know I'm supposed to be using SNCs to scan the stickers, but pretty soon I won't be able to use this manual computer method of inputting numbers (when I don't have access to a SNC) because I won't be able to read the numbers.

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