1) Look in store documents under people and then hiring. All the job descriptions are there. They are all under one attachment, so open it up and page down.

2) IPT occasionally will do info shifts. Very seldom will do reg - mainly if call offs, etc in my store. Several IPT people are cafe trained and will pull a lunch shift in there. They do answer assistance calls and answer the phones all the time.

3) I don't know of anything written or unwritten. I know that when the structure changed to IPT, that the idea was to free them up to have hours devoted solely to inventory stuff.

Believe me, Borders express, or the old Waldens, have exactly the same problem! Too much task and no hours to do it!

Guenevere, I know how you feel. Years ago I was an inventory supervisor for the SPT during the day and worked some nights on our night crew (Flagship store as well 14M). The SPT during the day handled all the inventory processing, and sorting of shipments. The night crew worked on shelving. This process worked great for many years only because the SPT were fully trained and were kept off the floor. 3 SPT receiving 3 book skids a day (5 day delivery schedule), handling SPO (Sales for SPO were just as high for our corp. sales and sometimes higher), returns and music. Because of the balance of staff the SPT would get way behind (Causing the night crew to slow down in shelving and having a waterfall effect for the rest of the store) if they were to go on to the sales floor.

When IPT came around things changed and the overnight crew became crossed trained to do other inventory functions. This slowed down the processes for quite sometime (BINC was not ready for having inventory processed at night in the computers at that time) On top of this BEST came around and the sorting bins were removed. Our store did this transition during the Christmas ramp-up when we were receiving 8 to 10 skids a day. Needless to say with this happening and the IPT in transition we had to hirer more inventory staff, which we reduced shortly after the ramp. I digress.

Basically if the store balances its workload in the backrooms with the inbound inventory there would be no free time for the IPT to be on the floor doing any tasks unrelated to inventory processing. If there is free time then it is either 3 things:

1. IPT not trained well enough. They need to be self motivated and there is always work to be done in inventory if the inventory manager is doing their job.

2. There are too many IPT people. The break down should be as follows: 1 person should sort a skid of books on to carts in 1.5 hours while the shelving of a library cart should be 2 hours. If these times are greater then the store is having some problems with its recovery, alpha or training of staff.

3. The GM does not know how to manage the inventory flow of the store correctly while balancing out the floor staff. The BEST inventory processing guide does explain that when the IPT is trained and experienced then the store will require less of them however they should be the last called to the floor, even the supervisors and managers should be on the floor helping customers before the IPT makes their way out to the floor.

For a store of 4M in volume you need no more than 4 IPT. Think of it this way, the size of the IPT should be based on the amount of inventory coming into the store. If your store gets 2 pallets of books a day you only need 8 IPT to process it with the other inventory functions.

Trust me about the system and the way it is managed. Borders has many poor managers that do not realize the importance of their staffs and how to position them in the most productive ways. I am not saying that staff should be slave driven but if they are empowered and happy then they can do anything. There is a great book that I recommended to many of the Supervisors, AMs and Managers that I had trained in the past: Zapp!!! The power of empowerment. It is great for anyone in any supervisory role.

There is job descriptions for everyone in einfo now. In our store we have a pretty small ipt and right now they do end up doing the jobs of info and register - and it causes them problems. We get 2 or 3 skids twice a week plus a skid from the new 747 and multimedia. because of all the time at info and reg our team get scheduled for they are behind. sometimes they are needed to help out but i can remember when I was on ipt how frustrating it was to end up on the sales floor for several hours and then get chewed out for being behind. our team works from 5am to 2pm but they are basically booksellers from 9 to 2pm, which cuts the productivity so new product is delayed getting out, skids back up etc which leads for frustration. usually in our district when ipt is being asked to do info and register on a regulary basis there is usually a staffing problem of some sort - and even more customers wondering why we don't have something new that they know is supposed to be out and available. As well as the problems of rpl's being behind and sections packed too tight, new product not available for the merch staff, inaccurate inventory because pic's aren't being done... one of the reasons that we switched to IPT a few years back was to have a team dedicated to just inventory processes. in my district the only stores that are TTF are the ones with an overnight crew.

Inventory Processing Team

You can find the job description on einfo under People