# SFS productivity



## KillerTL (Jun 11, 2021)

What does your store consider to be an acceptable pick speed.  When I took this position in January I was told 36 is green for Target but 40 plus is where it needs to be and now I am being told 50 plus and getting to 60.  I will hold the team accountable to whatever my SD wants but does this sound acceptable.  I will probably turnover about half the team because not many of them are at 50 and above.


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## MrT (Jun 11, 2021)

50 is what we do and shooting for 60.  We set a unit goal for everyone at 50 an hour.  So if they have a 5 hour shift there goal is 250 units. Basically have to pick at over 50 to get it to account for breaks and anything else.  40 units per hour is our acceptable number so 200 units for a 5 hour shift.  Anything less then that is unacceptable.


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## RedRevolution (Jun 11, 2021)

How is a 50+ even possible?  Our SFS picks are mostly women's and kids apparel or items that are typically 1 OH with very few backroom picks.  Never more than 1-2 eaches per pick.  Only way I see those numbers happening is a e-pick pathing that makes sense and picks that are from the backroom or picks with several eaches.


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## JiJi (Jun 11, 2021)

It depends on how well your store's inventory is. My store is an absolute shitfest, with half the team barely making 40/hr because we get sent in loops and circles by management to go look for things. Several TMs have been issued corrective actions, as well as being given many verbal warnings. Many people are pushing themselves past exhaustion and calling out because it's just that bad right now. 

Grocery is easy to pick over 40, but normal OPU it's really difficult some days.


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## RedRevolution (Jun 11, 2021)

Our backroom is very empty because of the latest obsession of FY 2021, OFOs.  It doesn't necessarily mean the items are on the floor in the right spot 😖    
Groceries we are doing 60-70, OPU is around 35-50 but SFS is on average 17-25.  For us, finding all 28-30 DPCIs with mostly style, beauty, and collector's/reseller items at a pace of 1 pick per minute is a wet dream.  I would love to see one of these stores that does 50+ UPH SFS put a GoPro on the cart and record it and show the pick list.


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## MrT (Jun 11, 2021)

My store averages 50 uph for sfs.  Im consistantly hitting 80/90.  Opu is about the same at 50 and probably 70ish for grocery.


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## RedRevolution (Jun 11, 2021)

I'm impressed!  Want to come to our store?  What's your secret MrT?  I average 40-50 with occasional 100+ but store average is in the teens to low 20s as I mentioned before.  Most of the team have trouble finding everything in the pick list and they pause the cart for the few higher performing TMs to clean up.  That probably makes the uph numbers look bad.  We have problems with repeating INFs due to rubber stamped floor audits by floor TMs who don't have time to do audits.  Also, our leadership kills productivity by their insistence on 0% INF.  It's not unusual to see a TM spend 2-3 hours on one SFS cart!


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## MrT (Jun 11, 2021)

RedRevolution said:


> I'm impressed!  Want to come to our store?  What's your secret MrT?  I average 40-50 with occasional 100+ but store average is in the teens to low 20s as I mentioned before.  Most of the team have trouble finding everything in the pick list and they pause the cart for the few higher performing TMs to clean up.  That probably makes the uph numbers look bad.  We have problems with repeating INFs due to rubber stamped floor audits by floor TMs who don't have time to do audits.  Also, our leadership kills productivity by their insistence on 0% INF.  It's not unusual to see a TM spend 2-3 hours on one SFS cart!


Weve worked real hard for data integrity. Our tms and leadership are really good with helping find items.  I wouldnt expect to keep our high numbers without staying ahead and clean everyday.  Infs are probably averaging around 2% opu and 5% sfs maybe slightly higher.  Honestly pushing our tms to hit goals and we do not have too many new tms most have been around since 4th quarter last year and its easier to train newer tms when there isnt a lot of them.


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## seasonaldude (Jun 11, 2021)

I'm going to out myself now. I don't care if anyone at Target gets mad and wants to come after me. I don't need Target. Consider this my Jerry McGuire moment.

If you have access and know where to look, you can find a list of every single TM in the company who picked even 1 OPU last fiscal year. It's a long list. You can sort by total units attempted and see the TMs who picked the most. At the very top of that sorted list, you'll see me. Like The Ghost of Tom Joad, you'll see me. That's my name up there. If you dig deeper, you'll find that my INF% for last year was under 3%. When it comes to picking, accurately and quickly, I know what I'm doing.

You know what I got for that? Well, I got a 60 cent per hour raise. I guess that's nice. It also got me large and painful callouses on my soles that I'll likely have to deal with for the rest of my life. Sunday morning I was picking in stationary and I squatted down to look for an item on the bottom shelf. Suddenly, my knee went all jelly and gave out. I had to sit down. Right there in stationary, I just plopped my ass on the ground. My knee started feeling a little better, so after a bit I went on. It hurt for a couple of days, not too bad. Then Tuesday afternoon, just walking down the stairs at home, it happened again. Picking so much so fast got me that too. (And, it got Target a TM who had to call out two days in a row.)

I actually do more UPH this year than I did last year as we're getting a higher percentage of groceries. Last week, my TL was showing me the list of everyone's productivity. He pointed one TM out that "needed to improve." Let's call her Jill. He asked me if I had any ideas about how to make her faster. I looked down at her UPH. It was more than mine was for last year. That' s not good enough now. Really? I'm beat. I'm dead. I'm broken. But, what I did for my store in the midst of a pandemic isn't good enough anymore? OK. (Jill, has by the way, has been relegated to fitting room duty until BTS. I'm betting she quits, which is a shame as she's a fun person to work with and great with guests.)

To what end? It's nothing more than we aren't first in the district. That's it. It's just our higher ups wanting to say they have their horses working faster than other stores' higher ups. Yay?!?

So, if your SD wants your already green in productivity TMs to go a little bit faster, ask him(her?) where it ends. Does it end with your best picker sitting on his ass in stationary because his knee gave out? What happens when you get your team to whatever magical number your SD wants, but then some other store in the district manages to go even higher? Are you going to have to pressure your team to match or exceed them? And, where does G.U.E.S.T. fit into all of this?

Or let me end here: Target's mission is to bring joy to the everyday lives of people. I have a whole other manifesto in my head about that and how fulfillment can better facilitate that. It starts and ends with this: joy can only come from the joyous. Bringing joy, not pressure for ever increasing metrics, to the lives of TMs, is the best thing that can be done to bring joy to guests. (Note, joy does not come from odd pizza parties, the occassional gift card, or praise for doing well once in a while. That's momentary happiness, not real joy.)

Jerry McGuire out for now.


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## JiJi (Jun 11, 2021)

seasonaldude said:


> I'm going to out myself now. I don't care if anyone at Target gets mad and wants to come after me. I don't need Target. Consider this my Jerry McGuire moment.
> 
> If you have access and know where to look, you can find a list of every single TM in the company who picked even 1 OPU last fiscal year. It's a long list. You can sort by total units attempted and see the TMs who picked the most. At the very top of that sorted list, you'll see me. Like The Ghost of Tom Joad, you'll see me. That's my name up there. If you dig deeper, you'll find that my INF% for last year was under 3%. When it comes to picking, accurately and quickly, I know what I'm doing.
> 
> ...


I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said here. Honestly, I may be on my way out soon myself, but we'll see. I'll definitely be having this discussion with our SD and HR though. We need more people fighting back.


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## RedRevolution (Jun 12, 2021)

seasonaldude said:


> I'm going to out myself now. I don't care if anyone at Target gets mad and wants to come after me. I don't need Target. Consider this my Jerry McGuire moment.
> 
> If you have access and know where to look, you can find a list of every single TM in the company who picked even 1 OPU last fiscal year. It's a long list. You can sort by total units attempted and see the TMs who picked the most. At the very top of that sorted list, you'll see me. Like The Ghost of Tom Joad, you'll see me. That's my name up there. If you dig deeper, you'll find that my INF% for last year was under 3%. When it comes to picking, accurately and quickly, I know what I'm doing.
> 
> ...


I hear you seasonaldude. You’re the goose that laid the golden egg. You spoiled your leadership with big numbers and they’ll keep pushing until something breaks.  What's it to them?  We're all just eight digit number with two zeroes at the front.

Several very good fulfillment TMs suddenly decided to go seek other opportunities right after their reviews. The rest will follow including me. Leadership doesn’t seem to care people are leaving. I got the same raise as you but this continued numbers game at the callous expense of TMs has reached a breaking point for us. We haven’t had a fulfillment TL for the longest time and yet we’ve been holding fulfillment together with green metrics with the exception of SFS pick productivity. We receive trucks that are cardboard baler on wheels, sales floor and backroom are a mess but we were still fulfilling guest orders on time and accurately. We’re continuously being pressured to improve our metrics when we lost a big chunk of the fulfillment and it’s becoming increasing harder to find stuff, bag orders on time and sort all packages before the deadline.

At what point does this stop? In pursuit of glorious number, former ETLs and SDs have suggested creative ways to hit improve numbers and I do not want to see that again.


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## Black Sheep 214 (Jun 12, 2021)

This emphasis on metrics for their own sake rather than doing what needs to be done properly for the sake of the business and guests is a poor long term strategy for the company. Being browbeaten to improve already green metrics by .05%, or whatever minuscule improvement they are demanding today, costs Spot good TMs who get tired of working their fingers to the bone for little remuneration, less appreciation and the constant pressure of being pushed to produce more, more, more, and faster, faster, faster. ASANTS, but guests get tired of receiving orders that are shopworn, damaged or missing pieces or items because someone somewhere was under extreme pressure to not INF anything. Spot seems to forget that metrics measure the means to an end, they are not the end in themselves. A company with perfect metrics that can’t retain team members or keep guests happy is in a much poorer position than a company with 95% metrics that has a stable staff and satisfied guests. Just saying.


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## Caliwest (Jun 12, 2021)

RedRevolution said:


> Our backroom is very empty because of the latest obsession of FY 2021, OFOs.  It doesn't necessarily mean the items are on the floor in the right spot 😖
> Groceries we are doing 60-70, OPU is around 35-50 but SFS is on average 17-25.  For us, finding all 28-30 DPCIs with mostly style, beauty, and collector's/reseller items at a pace of 1 pick per minute is a wet dream.  I would love to see one of these stores that does 50+ UPH SFS put a GoPro on the cart and record it and show the pick list.


Sometimes our grocery 1F1 s get pulled but sit on all the vehicles in the backroom. And we still have TM s overstocking and flexing to pricepoint which obliterates location location location for any give pick


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## KillerTL (Jun 14, 2021)

How much time do you give your team members to improve their productivity?  I am going to start reviewing their numbers with them weekly because a big majority of my team is picking at 40 units per hour or lower.  I inherited this team and the previous team leader did not hold them accountable in any kind of way.


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## MrT (Jun 14, 2021)

KillerTL said:


> How much time do you give your team members to improve their productivity?  I am going to start reviewing their numbers with them weekly because a big majority of my team is picking at 40 units per hour or lower.  I inherited this team and the previous team leader did not hold them accountable in any kind of way.


When i was sfs tl i went over my numbers weekly with my team.  The tl now reviews numbers everyday upon checking out.  Imo, i would at least do it weekly and look for improvements each week.  Doing it daily is a good way to show them that you are serious about meeting expectations.  I also recommend instead of chasing pick productivity you focus on units picked and set goals for how many units they should be at.  If your store is struggling perhaps pushing for green metrics first works though.  I think as long as you can speak on improvements then the deadline doesn't matter.


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