Reading Girl Scouts : Cookie Drop Pictures

Our cookie drop was a great success, as indicated by all the compiments we received. As a coodinated team effort, things went smoothly and most troops were able to quickly pickup their correct initial orders easily. Several savvy volunteers executing our plan were the key to the success. We tried something brave, to dynamically distribute partial cases as the troops came through and this required a clever factory-style routing system for the orders to be made up while they were being picked up.

Look at the main plan for details about how this operated.

Here's the combined entry and exit table. By make the flow through the building loop past this table twice only one person was needed to peopulate this station.

By carefully calculating the needed area for each cookie type by knowing the box dimensions and the totals, these delivery zone were created and labled (see the signs along the top of the back wall). the delivery people were directed to fill these areas, and they expressed their appreciation for having such easy to follow instructions.

The box delivery is in progress here. I've asked them to stack to a limited height to prevent avalanches and make it easy for the volunteers to pull boxes.

You can see the delivery truck that moved as close as possible to the front door. Lesson: The front walk should be simply redesigned to allow the truck to back up right to the front door.

All the cookies have arrived! Now it's time to design the sorting zones. Lesson: Excessing planning works well. By thinking through all the possible problems we were able to anticipate issues and keep things flowing inspite of how complex it is to sort and distribute at the same time.

Each cookie station has 4 sorting lanes. As orders are picked up from the front side, the ordered can be slid forward (to the right in this picture). Some example orders have already been sorted. Also, you can see the troop flow path coming in the far door, moving along the lane ends, and exiting through the closest door, marked by the arrows. Lesson: It may seems excessive marking the floor this way. It is vital! The easier it is for people to move along without guidance, the better.

Here's a closeup of the "Shortbread" station. They work between the heavy black lines keeping at least 4 orders up at all times. Lesson: The volunteers happily worked ahead and started stacking the lanes with orders ahead of time. This is not necessary, but they wanted to use their time to get ahead. We could use slightly fewer volunteers if we wanted, but that would be risky.

Another view showing 2 adjacent stations. When the troops pick up they make their way along the front edge of the lanes looking for piles tagged with their troop number.

Lots of lanes have been presorted. Lesson: Each volunteer was provided with a special stack of little tags that showed each troop's order for a single cookie type, in the order of troop arrival. This made it easy for the volunteers to work along.

Here we are in full operation. Only three troops are here together on the average, to keep the main flow from getting too crowded.