Improving Your Retail Merchandise Movement
After you have ordered new merchandise, the planning for its arrival should begin. Make sure you request a delivery date and a way to correspond with the vendor that you ordered from so you can accurately expect when the goods will arrive. Vendors are familiar with supplying their customers with “receipt of goods” dates. Once the merchandise does arrive you will need to receive it (physically bring it in your facility and store it), process it (open the carton, verify quantity (optional) and check the condition of the contents, strip off plastic or paper packaging and unwanted tags, hang/fold/or steam the merchandise), and finally merchandise it (move it to the sales floor for presentation or into a storage area).
While working with many retailers, both large and small, over the last three decades we have noticed that there is significant variance in how these functions are performed and how productive they may be. In order to assist your firm to optimize the productivity of these three key functions we would like to offer the following recommendations. Keep in mind that the size of your facility and the layout you employ will affect how you perform these tasks; however, the general concept of each recommendation should be considered.
- Make sure you are fully prepared for any large deliveries and have planned how you will handle them in advance
- Insure you have all the right conveyance and processing tools available and the area you will use to store and process the goods is clean, organized, and available
- When the goods arrive bring them in in a smooth flow and utilize as many of your employees as possible to unload the truck quickly and begin processing immediately
- If you have to store the incoming merchandise and process it after store hours make sure the cartons are available and stored on an organized manner
- Arrange your processing area to facilitate an organized and productive flow from one function to another. The more an item stops and starts during the processing flow, the less productive the process may be
- Utilize appropriate work tables to process the merchandise and do not process off of the floor or other cartons
- Once processed, hang the merchandise on movable hanging racks or movable carts with shelves (for folded goods) for efficient movement to the sales floor
- Clean up the area once all the goods are processed to make it ready for the next truck receipts
- Observe how many units your team can unload, process, and deliver per man-hour so that you can use those statistics to plan your labor needs for future receipts based upon the anticipated receipt volume
Some basic productivity guidelines for anticipating how much time you will need for each of these key functions are:
- Receiving: unload - about 300 cartons per man-hour*
- Process: from carton open to hang or fold on a rack or cart - about 150 units per man-hour
- Merchandising: moving rack or cart to sales floor (or stockroom) and placing items for sale - about 100 items per man-hour
* Note: that per man-hour means the time used for "each" person working. For example: 2 man-hours would equal 2 people working for 1 hour each.
The time employed for all three functions should approximate the following:
- Receiving: 10% of total team time used
- Processing: 20% of total team time used
- Merchandising: 70% of total team time used
As each retail organization is unique and requires its own set of performance metrics, please contact us at www.AtlantaRetailConsulting.com if you would like more information.
