How to get the shelf team hunting gaps?

Why the team is the first detector

A shelf employee spends the day in front of the shelves. They see gaps before anyone else, often before the shopper. But seeing is not reporting: if they must go to the office, write in a notebook, or wait for the department manager’s walk, the information is lost, and the gap stays until the next replenishment pass. The 72% of store-caused out-of-stocks measured by Corsten and Gruen are, in good part, gaps someone saw without anything being triggered.

One figure per aisle, displayed every day

A team cannot improve on what it does not measure. The on-shelf out-of-stock rate of each aisle, counted at a fixed time and displayed in the back room or on the team board, changes the conversation: no more “there are gaps”, but “7.5% yesterday, 5% today”. The count is explained in on-shelf out-of-stock rate: how to calculate it.

Three rules for the figure to motivate rather than discourage:

• compare each aisle with itself (last week), not with other aisles;
• also display the list of the ten most often missing products, because that is what you act on;
• set a reachable target (get under 5%, then under 4%) rather than an ideal.

A gesture to report, without the office

Reporting must take less time than doing nothing. A notebook in the office does not work; a message to the department manager gets lost; an app on the employee’s phone, scanning the product or the shelf label, works because it is done on the spot in a few seconds. The reported gap feeds directly the list of the next replenishment pass, described in how to organise replenishment to avoid gaps on the shelf.

This gesture also serves to report causes: “in the back room”, “book stock wrong”, “facing too small”. The team knows, and it is this information that lets you treat the cause rather than the symptom.

Feedback, fast

Reporting dies out if nothing follows. Feedback can be minimal, but it must be visible: the gap was filled within a quarter of an hour; the facing of the reference was doubled; the book stock was corrected and the order went out. A five-minute point at the morning briefing on “what was reported yesterday and what we did about it” is enough to keep the loop alive.

What not to do

• A bonus on the out-of-stock rate alone: it encourages not recording gaps. If there is a bonus, it rewards the number of reports handled, not the rate.
• A dedicated weekly meeting: it does not survive the first busy week. The subject lives in the daily briefing.
• A single store-wide target: it hides struggling aisles and commits nobody.

An example

Household aisle, four people. Week 1: count at 11 am and 5 pm, rate displayed, 8% on average. Week 2: phone reporting switched on, 60 reports, including 18 “in the back room” and 9 “book stock wrong”. Week 3: nine stocks corrected, two facings doubled, one replenishment pass added at 5 pm. Week 4: 4.5%. The displayed figure did the rest.

What shopper reporting changes

ShelfAlert gives the team and the shoppers the same gesture: a scan, an alert, a list. The manager sees in one dashboard what was reported, by whom, and what remains to handle; the team sees the feedback on its reports. 14-day trial, no payment card: see the plan for store managers.

Sources

• Corsten, Gruen, “On Shelf Availability”, 2004: summary.
• Gruen, Corsten, Bharadwaj, “Retail Out-of-Stocks: A Worldwide Examination”, GMA, 2002: full study (PDF).