OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and the situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Name and describe your organization.

The organization in which I am employed is The Home Depot. The Home Depot is the
largest home improvement and hardware retail retailer in the world. The Home Depot
operates over 2,000 retail stores across the United States.

2) Describe your role in the organization (it can be an internal or external role).

At the Home Depot, I work as an electrical sales associate. My position involves selling
and giving advice on home electrical fixtures, ceiling fans, light switches, outlets, and
light bulbs. I have worked in this position for two years now.

3) Describe the situation, including information you think the will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require
selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included).

The case that I will be describing here has happened recently. Last year, the Home Depot
had released a new inventory management application on our work phones. This system
is called Sidekick and it is designed to give employees a more focused way of performing
re-stock and packdowns. Before this system, I had to check stock individually or I would
have to do what is known as a full bay packdown where every item in the overhead must
be pulled down. The items that can fit on the shelves are stocked while the rest is put
back up. The whole process requires a lot of time and effort and can often be redundant.
Sidekick was designed to eliminate the need for full bay packdowns. But this month, my
supervisor explained that our department has shown low numbers for item shelf
availability. At the staff meeting with our district managers, it was decided that for our
department, all bay packdowns on Sidekick must now be performed as full bay
packdowns. I see this as a major issue as performing such extensive packdowns takes me

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 away from being available to the customer. I asked my supervisor if I could perform bay
packdowns through Sidekick as normal but take extra care to fully packdown each SKU
instead of having to take the time for full bay packdowns. But she explained that as it is a
decision by district management, we must comply. My dilemma is that working this way
is highly innefecient as some overheads can have dozens of boxed items. Through
Sidekick, bay packdowns would take me around 30 minutes depending on how many
items need restock. But a full bay packdown could take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours
depending on how many items are in the overhead. I have noticed that my shifts are now
more focused on stocking shelves than it is about helping customers.

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