unfi august 2016 newsleter

Summer 2016 Bringing UNFI Associates Together

THE UNIFIER

2

3 Helping the Team written by Jared Bradford

UNFI Racine After Two Years; How Are We Doing? Written by Chet Hicok

IN THIS ISSUE

4 Safety Corner provided by Jim Hellen

5 2016 UNFI– RAC Charitable Donations + HHC Team Leaders

6 Helping Hands Achievements

7 Congrats to our B&G Team + BBQ Wars

SUMMER AT

UNFI RACINE

8 Riding Along written by Jared Bradford

9 Highlights– Racine’s Top Performing Drivers

10 Racine Garden Wars + Summer Picnic + My Experience at UNFI written by Rachel Ihn

11 Up & Coming Volunteer Opportunities

“Providing healthy food is our heritage, which is present in every as-pect of our business.”


J UNFI RACINE AFTER TWO YEARS; HOW ARE WE DOING? Chet Hicok

B

une 15, 2014, just two short years ago,

was the day UNFI’s 14th distribution center opened in Sturtevant, WI. How are we doing now that we’ve been open for two years? Very well thank you…….A BIG THANK YOU! UNFI Racine got some great news on Friday morning, August 18th. UNFI’s “Bench Mark Re-port” rates all UNFI DC in 29 different catego-ries that get summed together under three prima-ry headings of Overall Distribution, Warehouse Operations, and Transportation Operations. Without confusing everyone with the math be-hind UNFI’s business metric rating system, each DC is rated from best to worst in the 29 different performance categories and all those sub catego-ries get weighted and added together to produce the three overall ranking. A sampling of metrics that are measured are: Overall Safety DART rate, Truck Shorts + Mis-picks + Damage upon deliv-ery, Cost per Case, On-Time Delivery %, Vehi-cle Accidents Per Million Miles, Warehouse Productivity, etc., most rated both on year to year improvement as well as being rated on the actual metric.

Because year to year improvement is part of the benchmark report ratings, DC’s are only placed on the benchmark report after completing an en-tire fiscal year. For UNFI Racine, Fiscal 2016, which was just completed in July this year, was our first year on the Benchmark report. ack to paragraph one and the question “How are we doing?” Racine was ranked first place for FY 2016 not in one category, but in all three Benchmark Report categories of Overall Distribution, Warehouse Operations, and Trans-portation Operations. What a testament to the quality of the team as a whole at UNFI in Sturte-vant! Together with the help of many people, what was Mr. Borzynski’s cabbage field three short years ago has been transformed into the highest rated DC in all of UNFI for the fiscal 2016 year that ended in July. Have we arrived at perfection? Absolutely not, and there’s lots of room for us to get better as we continue to ma-ture and grow as a UNFI distribution center. The #1 spot for FY 2016 is certainly a great accom-plishment though, and all at UNFI Racine should be very proud!


HELPING THE TEAM Written by Jared Bradford gg

s an associate working on the shipping shift

at UNFI, it may seem like everything is synonymous

throughout every warehouse companywide. Getting

an opportunity to travel to another DC’s to train/help

out gave me the chance to see how some of the same

procedures are done in different ways. It also gave

me, and my traveling champions, the chance to

brainstorm with other associates/supervisors on how

to make things more efficient in their warehouse, as

well as ours.

The 1st DC I went to was our new location in

Prescott, WI. Most everyone, says the supervisors,

had almost no experience. From helping the pickers

to replenishment team, I found myself thrust into a

leadership position immediately having to train al-

most 30 associates at once. The challenge I received

from this helped me grow not only as a UNFI

employee, but also as a person. After being asked

to return to the Prescott DC a few more times, I was

recruited for a “Go Live” in Indiana, implementing

the Manhattan computer system. This was a step up

from what I was doing before as now we had a

whole warehouse to train as opposed to just selec-

tors. With all the support that came from other

warehouses and even some corporate higher ups

being there, it was about as smooth a transition any

of us could have asked for. Based on my experienc-

es from helping out at multiple DC’s, I think all of

our employees should take the chance to go lend a

helping hand to a different UNFI warehouse if giv-

en the opportunity. It’s mutually beneficial to you

and the people you’re helping; and it also brings a

companywide camaraderie many employers can’t

say they possess.

A


Jim Hellen

PIT=Powered Industrial Truck Rules=Actions that are required to be taken by all operators. Let’s quickly review a couple of very important PIT rules. Please see me if you have any questions. If you get off your PIT a couple of things MUST happen. First, the truck must come to a COM-PLETE STOP before you get off. Don’t ever “hop” off while the truck is still rolling. Like this guy… Once you get off the stopped PIT, you must remember… If you are 25 feet away from the PIT, TURN IT OFF. If the PIT is out of your sight at any time, TURN IT OFF.

Safety Corner

Allergen Music Breakfast

Nature Care Nutrition

Chill Odor Clean

Order Cooler Organic

Customer Dinner Outbound

Driver Pallet Dry

Pest Earth Quality

Farm Racking Food

Repack Fork Safety

Forklift Selector Freezer

Shoes GMO Spoon

HACCP Sturtevant Healthy

Tractor Inbound Trailer

UNFI ING Knife

Vest Locker Water

Lunch Wave


Associate Relief Fund —

$4,800

$14,800 donated

Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis—$500

Eco-Justice Center —- $850

Run w/ Cops for Special Olympics—

$500

Relay for Life American Cancer

Society—

$3,000

Feeding America—

$1,500

M.O.S.E.S—

$1,500

Take a Stand—

$500

Growing Home Urban Garden—

$1,000

2016 UNFI-RACINE HELPING HANDS COMMITTEE

Charitable Donations

Al’s Run Walk for Children’s Hospital —

$650

HHC

TEAM LEADERS

B&G Team

Andrew Miller

Charles Adams

Transportation Shipping Receiving Inventory Control

Lisa Rodriguez

Christine Purdy

Linda Plaza

Jennifer Russell


HELPING HANDS ACHIEVEMENTS

KAYLA’S PLAYGROUND was a mission established by the city of Franklin to “enable all who have special needs to forget about the challenges that they are pre-sented with daily”. In Fall of 2016 UNFI associates joined

"Kayla's Krew”, volunteer-ing 108 hours to the con-struction of Kayla’s Play-ground. This turned out to be a fun and rewarding expe-rience.

ECO-JUSTICE CENTER has continued to allow our UNFI associates to volunteer and make a difference for a cause they believe in. At the Eco-Justice Center vol-unteers put their outside skills to work; weed-ing, planting, raking, or general farm labor. We also got to walk and feed the Alpacas! It was a fun experience and we have managed to donate 48 volunteer hours of our time as a company to this organization.

During this 2016 fiscal year, UNFI– Racine associates came together to continue to positively give back to the Ra-cine community. In addition to raising money for charitable causes aligned with our core beliefs; Racine has donat-ed 448 volunteer hours in the last year alone.

WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTER of Racine is fighting for an end to domestic violence in our community. UNFI Racine put in their time and efforts to help get the new building up and running for their grand opening! In doing so, we volunteered a total of 262 hours to the Women’s Resource Center!

RACINE BEACH CLEANUP involved a number of UNFI volunteers that dedicated their time to picking up trash and disposing of any loose particles on the beach. Between all of our volunteers we spent a total of 30 hours cleaning up Racine’s beach. A fun way to get outside, interact, & put our feet in the sand!


Congrats to our B&G team! During this year’s audit, the team achieved the status of “Excellent” equaling an SQF of 96! As a big thank you for going above and beyond, Rodney cooked breakfast for the team. Thank you for your continued

dedication. “Just remember every piece of trash you help pick-up, helps this team aim for another excellent score next audit.” ~Rodney Edie

BBQ WARS The BBQ wars included a pot-luck lunch, bake sale, cash raffle, and finally a prize raffle to raise money for the Associate Re-lief Fund. A total of $1,982 was raised, an in-crease from last year by $97! Ra-

cine associates really stepped up and contributed to a cause that not only supports fellow coworkers but also demon-strates the strength of our culture. Thank you to all who participated in this event.


RIDING ALONG Written by Jared Bradfordjjjjjj

e as selectors often go through our days grab-

bing our order, building pallets, and dropping them

off at the designated door in a monotonous routine.

Even with us being the genesis of everything that

comes out of the warehouse, there’s never a second

thought as to what happens to the order once it

leaves our custody. Accompanying one of our truck

drivers on his regular route allowed me to see the

aftermath of the work we do inside the warehouse.

Also I got to see how they prepared themselves for

the long ride including the prep work they had to do

before even entering the cabin of the truck. As we

made our 1st stop at an Amazon warehouse in Chi-

cago, I saw the process they go through with docking

and dropping off a load firsthand. While helping him

unload the truck, I also observed what happens when

a pallet isn’t stacked stably enough to make it

through the one hour ride in the trailer. This was

not a pretty sight. The rest of our route took us

through the Chicago/Illinois area and as we trav-

elled and conversed; the daily issues drivers go

through on and off the road became more coherent

to me. Just working in the warehouse (especially in

the freezer) gives us no grasp on what effect our

job has on other coworkers until we are able to ex-

perience it alongside them. We usually don’t go

through our days thinking about one another since

we aren’t working alongside each other, but we

should find a way to work more in concert with one

another whatever way we can. All in all, it was an

enlightening experience and I encourage all of my

fellow selectors to go on a ride along as well.

W


Angela Kessler 2016 RACINE- TRANSPORTATION

The Transportation department tracks several driver performance metrics throughout the year. In fiscal year 2016, we initiated a Top Performing Driver program that recognizes individuals who meet the four measurable and equitable performance and safety goals listed below:

≤ 3% long idle time

Zero Hours of Service violations

Zero preventable accidents

Zero injuries

YEAR END OVERALL RESULTS

2.08% long idle time

99.4% HOS compliance- exceeded goal of 98.1%

Department record- 69 days

TOP PERFORMING DRIVERS

Caleb Briggs

Quinn Days

Andrew Goad

Leroy Hargrove

George Hernandez

John Kearns

Daniel Ksobiech

Austen Lucksted

Peter Madden

Matthew Moffitt

Tyler Morgan

Michael Morganelli

Jeffrey Prier

Dennis Roy

Richard Scheidt

Todd Strangberg

Lawrence Tobar

Riley Verhaeghe

Keith Whiteside

Congratulations to the 19 Top Performing Drivers who will have their name added to a driver plaque and receive a recognition award.

10 drivers will receive award for achieving the three safety goals (0 HOS violations, 0 accidents, 0 injuries):

Alexander Beesly

Chad Corveleyn

Anthony Days

Steven Hunter

Michael Kangas

James Katich

Travis Landers

Donald Parlock

Nathaniel Rombak

Lafayette Smith

Thank you all for your continued efforts to make UNFI Racine Transportation #1!


LESSONS FROM MY INTERNSHIP Written by Rachel Ihn In today’s job market, working an internship seems like a no-brainer. In efforts to build up resumes and increase understand-ing, college students my age often become overwhelmed as the pressures to find the “right experience” mount up. After all, how can you have a clear understanding of your skill set if you’ve never chal-lenged yourself? My internship at UNFI provided me with the type of exposure to my field I was look-ing for. I was able to use what I had learned in the class-room and apply it practically. During the course of the

summer here at UN-FI, I have learned about myself the most. I have a better understanding of my goals, and an clearer image of life after college. The aspect that made my experi-ence even better was the strong connection to philanthropy ap-parent in this estab-lishment. I was able to experience work-ing for a company whose associates held the same values as I did. I am thankful for the opportunity I have been given here, and will continue to use the knowledge I have gained to reach my goals in future careers.

WISCONSIN STATE FAIR SUMMER PICNIC This year UNFI associates en-joyed a hot summer day at the Wisconsin State Fair. The Wis-consin State Fair is a trademark event hosting a variety of differ-ent food vendors, with something for everyone. As always, the food at the State Fair was deli-cious with lunch catered by Saz’s. With each of the Racine associ-ates receiving a ride voucher, families of all ages were able to enjoy the park’s food and festivi-ties. Thank you to those associ-ates who came and shared the beautiful day with the group.

RACINE GARDEN In an effort to grow organi-cally, UNFI associates planted in hay bails in a game of department verses department. Teams includ-ed transportation, HR/ Maintenance/IC/Safety, Receiving, and Shipping. Although there were no clear winners of this chal-

lenge; UNFI RAC enjoyed freshly made salsa curtesy of Nick Lee, and Christine Purdy.

In the future, Racine hopes to grow an organic commu-nity garden, for the use of UNFI associates and com-munity families.


volunteer

opportunities!

There are a few fun volunteer opportunities approaching us with the fall weather this year! In the next few months we will be participating in a couple 5k Run/Walks, completing another Beach Clean-up, helping the Hunger Task Force harvest some of their farms, and working together to collaborate on new ideas or fundraisers to help assist with our Associate Relief Fund.

Runs/Walks

Focus on Community– September 10th, 2016 @ 6:00PM (Racine, WI) Substance Abuse

Jingle Bell 5k– December 3rd, 2016 @ 9:30AM

(Racine, WI) Arthritis Foundation

Hunger Task Force Awaiting October Dates &

Times

Beach Clean-up

September 15th @ 8:00AM

Habitat for Humanity

Awaiting Dates & Times

NEW Check out this year’s

See your supervisor for more details!

unfi august 2016 newsleter

Documents