Enhancing Pallet Receiving & Cold Chain Compliance – $8.4M+ in Shrink Reduction
Impact Highlights
Operational Scale
User verified in first 2 periods
Loss Prevention
Forecasted on mis-delivered pallets
Adoption
Adopted Pallet Scanning feature
My Role & Contribution
Leadership Contribution
Facilitation Coaching: Coached Product Designers in facilitating alignment workshops with business owners.
Democratized Research: Created opportunities for all design team members to conduct field research, regardless of their direct involvement.
UX Research Collaboration: Partnered with UXR to develop study guides for both discovery and post-launch feedback, ensuring insights drove iteration.
Hands-On Contribution
Discovery Leadership: Planned and co-facilitated discovery workshops, aligning business and design perspectives.
Supporting Role: The team asked me to remain engaged throughout problem-solving, and refinement phases, leveraging my expertise in store operations and behavioral analytics.
Problem & Context
Store associates previously relied on paper load sheets to verify pallet deliveries, making the process manual and prone to errors.
Operational Challenges: Pallets were frequently unloaded at the wrong store, leading to inefficiencies such as:
Wasted time returning misdelivered pallets to trucks.
Overstocking of incorrect inventory, leading to potential shrinkage.
Store leaders resorting to selling misdelivered inventory, creating an unstructured workaround.
Business Impact: Lack of real-time tracking and verification caused significant disruptions in store operations and supply chain visibility.
Solutions
Real-Time Feedback Integration:
Implemented immediate visual and audio feedback when a pallet was mis-delivered.
Designed a seamless issue-logging process for misplaced pallets, reducing manual errors.
Phase 2 Enhancements:
Integrated behavioral analytics to refine usability and determine which feature areas no longer needed investment.
How we got there: Design Strategy
Fast-track Alignment: Focused on problem framing and gaining shared alignment during Discovery phase, by facilitating fast-track alignment, design workshops.
Tight Collaboration with UXR: Worked closely with research teams to ensure that design decisions were grounded in user insights.
Prototyping & Iterative Testing: Validated the scanning experience early and often with:
Store associates (primary users).
SMEs & Business Owners to ensure feasibility and operational alignment.
Results & Impact
Operational Scale: 4.2 million pallets verified across P1 and P2.
Loss Prevention: 8,000 mis-delivered pallets identified, preventing $4 million in product loss across P1 and P2. $8.4M total business case target by P13.
Adoption & Engagement:
98% of stores using My Day adopted Pallet Scanning.
74% of pallets now scanned via My Day, surpassing the 70% goal.
Process Improvements:
Over 10,000 pallet issues submitted, improving Distribution Center workflows.
Identified top issue: missing pallet stickers, prompting corrective actions.
Iterative Loop - Unmet Needs
Cold-Chain Pallet Tracking Needs Work: Behavioral analytics revealed that users rapidly mark all pallets as “moved into cold room”, casting doubt on tracking accuracy.
Expansion Areas:
Missing Pallet Tracking: Developing tools to track and quantify missing pallets.
Automating BOH (Balance on Hand) Updates: Exploring ways to dynamically update BOH using verified delivery data.
Optimizing Credit Submission Process: Investigating ways to automate claims, reducing store workload.
Enhancing Stocking Prioritization: Utilizing pallet data to inform nightly stocking strategies.
Distribution Center Collaboration: Using insights to drive long-term operational improvements.