This figure obviously varies from club to club but let's try to do the math on this and see where it leads us. We're only going to focus on the stocking aspect and leave receiving out of the equation for this exercise. Receiving is a slightly different beast in and of itself and, in my opinion, has been even more heavily impacted by the elimination of the overnight shift and implementation of block scheduling, which in turn has inflicted the most damage to my club and the other clubs I am most familiar with.
Okay, so let's walk through this thing, shall we?
Prior to block scheduling, there was a night crew. They had 8 hours of uninterrupted stocking every night. Since block scheduling was unleashed, that figure was cut down to 6 hours, except on the weekends where it increases to 8 or 8 and a half. Again, this is uninterrupted hours to stock the store as it is effectively closed.
The night crew I last worked on had a baseline of 10 associates every night and 5 available forklifts in constant use for the entire shift. That works out to 80 man hours every night of uninterrupted readying of the store for the next business day.
With Block Scheduling, the club I'm currently at has 5 associates per evening and 6 each morning. That's 15 man hours in the evening and 18 man hours in the morning for a total of 33 man hours of uninterrupted stocking, 5 days a week, with 45 and 45.5 man hours the other two days. There are generally 3 people on the floor running forklifts for either of these shifts.
Let's point out a few things now that we've generalized the scenario as much as possible:
I didn't include the manager, whose involvement is/was needed in both the old scheme and the current one. In our store, the manager handles most of the dropping of the freight needed to be stocked by the morning crew, once he has dealt with whatever section of the store he decides to take ownership of at 8:30 when the store closes.
I didn't figure in the usual variables such as some nights or mornings we have one or two fewer associates.
I didn't throw in the fact that some nights or mornings one of the associates leaves the floor and assists with running freight off the dock and into the steel.
Essentially I am only fixated on the stocking part.
80 man hours versus 33 to 45.
That's a hell of a disparity, don't you think? But that's just one store out of 599. Obviously it is not going to be identical at every store across the board. There are many stores that I am aware of who are facing situations that are much more severe than this one. And then there are some that may be slightly better off, too.
Needless to say, the thing that really has me confused is this: When I do the math on this, the man hours thing doesn't add up. How did the person or persons who came up with this wonderful system ever reach the conclusion that this drastic overhaul of the system would ever result in any sort of benefit to the stores? How did those who approved it see the benefit? When you cut more than half the man hours from the process itself, how much acid would you have had to drop in order to think this wouldn't prove to be highly detrimental to the store's ability to function properly?
So how about everyone else's store?