Reading Girl Scouts : Cookie Drop 2010 : Details

Extra details

Here is a collection of knowledge nuggets determined while executing the drop. Some of useful to the Drop Manager, others are useful to the volunteers that help with the drop, and some may be informative for the troops collecting cookies.

Here is a directory with my spreadsheets and drawings. The files ending in ods and odg were created with OpenOffice, a free office suite application package.

Pre-drop preparation

Send out an e-mail to Cookie Managers, and Troop leaders 1 month ahead announcing the drop date.

Once all the orders are in, use Quickbase to generate an exported spreadsheet or screen grab of orders by troop. Now order the troops by order size, and then take the smalled 5 and put them first in the time slots. Then alternate large and small orders thereafter. Leave a few slots open at the 1/3 and 2/3 time periods to support trades. Announce the time slot allocations in an e-mail as soon as possible. Also start the request for volunteers (need 4-6) and hand trucks (need at least 6).

Either fill in the Order Pages provide by council by hand or use Ralph's spreadsheet tricks to generate the order pages.

Print out the lovely signage Ralph created. You may have to correct for new cookie types.

Drop set up

There materials are needed to set up the drop:

• The Drop coordinator needs their own breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. They are stationed at Rice Moody all day long.
• printouts (schedules, troop phone #s, tallies, build sheets)
• official materials - receipt books, signs
• 2 rolls 1-inch wide blue masking tape (limited adhesion) - for marking floor
• 1 roll duct tape - for box repairs and signs
• 6 rolls transparent dispenser tape - used by volunteers to affix build sheets
• 1 wide black marker - for signage and special labeling
• 25-100ft ruler - to mark the floor
• clipboard - handy for quick reference materials
• Snacks, drinks, napkins, cups: for truckers and volunteers. 2-liter bottles of drinks: 2 flavored seltzer, 1 diet coke, 1 sprite. Some crackers, some veggies and fruit with dip, and toothpicks
• optional knee pads - you'll be taping marks on the floor for a while

When laying out the floor plan, you can use a ruler or count the tiles. Each palette covers a 40x48 inches (3.5 tiles by 4 tiles) rectangle is and less than 80 inches high. Remember to leave access space between the palette stacks, 3 feet (3 tiles) is enough for people to pass.

Only lay out the palette footprints for the truckers. Then once the delivery is complete, lay out the blue lines and delivery station marks.

Divide out the number of cases by the cases per palette number to determine the number of palette footprints to layout. For 2007 the cases per palette were:

Carmel Delites : 162
Peanut Butter Patties : 162
Shortbread : 187
Thin Mints : 180
Peanut Butter Sandwiches : 187
Thanks-a-lots : 140
Lemonades : 140
Daisy Go Rounds : ?

Be careful of the case stacks toppling as they are disassembled. Insist that the truckers will cross stack the cases to prevent uncoupled towers of cases from falling. Make sure they use a regular pattern that you understand, so you can tally the completed piles before they leave. Inspect boxes for damage (punctures or crushing). The truckers are supposed to have spares.

Alternate Drop schemes

Our current drop scheme is relatively efficient, and is an improvement over the earlier scheme which sorted all the pile at once before any troops could pick up. If the truck can be backed up to Rice Moody's building, it can be unloaded in about 5 hours of trucker-only time. And the Cookie Drop Coordinator watching. Then we run the order building and distribution in 4 hours with 4-6 volunteers.

The council sends a representative to check on our drop and they always recommend that we consider a "truck drop". Ralph visited the 2010 Billerica and Bedford drops to compare techniques.

Billerica (about 28000 boxes) used an indoor loading dock at a large hardware store. The semi truck was unloaded as full palettes using a palette jack. Then, on the loading doc on empty palettes, the orders were assembled by about 8 volunteers. The palette jacks were used to roll the complete orders to the pick up door and cars were loaded one at a time. Truck unload, 30 minutes. Prep time 8AM-12Noon. Pickups, 12Noon-6PM, unscheduled.

Bedford (about 12000 boxes) use the regular outdoor truck drop. Orders were assembled inside the truck with truckers helping feed forward the cookies. Then 3 volunteers counted and loaded cars, one at a time. Truck time, overlapped with assembly and pickup times. 3.5 hours. Troops scheduled on 5 minute intervals.

Conclusions: Billerica was similar to our system but took longer and and same number of volunteers. It did free up the truck the fastest. Not an advantage for us. Bedford is very efficient, but they are in the weather (it was VERY cold), and could easily backup the flow. This is a solution for Reading if we don't have the needed volunteers or the space. For our next season (2011) Ralph recommends keeping our current system.