Target's eye on the world

It's 7:30 a.m. on the third floor of Target Corp.'s downtown Minneapolis headquarters, and the morning crew at Target's Corporate Command Center has made it through the most hectic part of Black Friday without incident.

"If there are going to be problems, usually it's in the first 30 to 45 minutes of when the doors open," said Ann Mielke, one of two supervisors covering the day-after-Thanksgiving rush.

Control room technicians can check 75,000 store security cameras at any given time from their souped-up PCs. On this day, their focus is on 10 stores with the highest sales volume or a history of problems, including ones in New York and Los Angeles. They occasionally peek in on the downtown Minneapolis store, the store on Lake Street, as well as stores in Bloomington and Duluth.

Known inside Target as C3, the Corporate Command Center doubled its staff Friday to back up stores and make sure crowds were orderly. But the high-tech facility serves as much more than a store-monitoring operation.

Working in a room with a NASA-like feel, Target technicians study maps, satellite data and government reports to check in on everything from weather and road construction to political unrest and the global spread of the H1N1 flu virus.

Their mission is to keep tabs on anything that could disrupt operations at Target's 1,743 stores or worldwide offices. And it's such a cool place that CEO Gregg Steinhafel and other top executives often stop in.

"It ties together response strategies for the entire company on any kind of crisis," said Mike Rackley, Target's senior manager for global security, who runs the center.

Deficiencies from Katrina

The facility represents a significant investment in round-the-clock staffing and the latest software and technology, though Target officials declined to put a dollar figure on it. It's a vital tool to help the retailer, with $65 billion in sales last year, anticipate and solve problems quickly at its stores and in its supply chain.

But the sophistication of the center reflects the growing role that national chains such as Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and others have in working with government agencies during emergencies. Retailers have complex distribution networks and know how to efficiently deliver goods across the country.

Wal-Mart led the relief effort when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005; it commandeered 45 truckloads of goods to the area before the hurricane ever hit land. Wal-Mart eventually distributed at least 100 truckloads of food, water, fuel and supplies such as soap and toilet paper to displaced residents across Louisiana and Mississippi.

For Target, the hurricane exposed some deficiencies. The retailer created its Corporate Command Center after the 9/11 terror strikes, and housed it in a 12-by-17-foot office. After Katrina, Target invested in infrastructure and moved the operation into its current space, which is nine times bigger and has large meeting areas.

"Katrina was a wake-up call," Rackley said. "No one in the country was ready for the level of devastation. We had to look at that. We learned we needed a stronger decision-support system. We needed the ability to make decisions faster throughout the whole company so we could move more quickly."

Now, when the Command Center identifies a threat -- a blizzard, say -- a team representing every division in the company gathers around the conference room table within a half hour to an hour, spokeswoman Amy Reilly said. A merchandising manager will make sure key items, such as shovels, batteries and bottled water, are plentiful and easy to find. Someone in human resources might see if employees need help getting to stores. Another person will touch base with emergency workers. Trucks may need to be rerouted, or generators brought in.

Once a plan is established, the team works through its network of 13 regional centers to spread the word.

Casey Chroust, executive vice president of retail operations with the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said Target's "cutting-edge command center" can provide a critical link to government responders during natural disasters.

"A retailer's response is the sum of an amazing amount of coordinating across departments -- human resources, logistics, loss prevention and security, the IT department and senior management who needs to make tough calls -- all these things have to come together in an incredibly short period of time to perform successfully," he said. "Retailers do it because they plan and prepare and step up to be good corporate citizens for the safety of their customers and employees."

Nearing wildfires

Target's Command Center follows a decisionmaking structure used in law enforcement, with a clearly defined manager always in charge. Staff members come from a variety of backgrounds -- some have been in the military or have law enforcement training, while others have worked in stores. Rackley, a business major with nearly two decades at Target, worked his way up the ranks in the asset protection department, which focuses on preventing theft and other losses.

But the backbone of Target's facility lies in technology.

When wildfires raged in Southern California in August and September, Target used a high-octane version of Google Earth to plot the fires in relation to its stores, and to monitor the fallout from street level. It has 84 stores in the Los Angeles area, and three Target stores were within eight miles of one of the fires.

"We're looking at such things as air quality and how that affects our customers and team members, as well as the facility itself," Rackley said. "We're also looking at our routes to see that our trucks are able to move product so our stores can stay in stock. And we're working with guests and firefighters who need supplies."

Workers at the Command Center can pinpoint the flight routes and location of corporate jets and can access travel itineraries of every employee.

While Target operates stores only in the United States, it has sourcing offices in 20 countries, including Mexico, Egypt, Spain, Poland, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. It employs 2,100 people at an office in Bangalore, India.

On a day in late September, 68 employees were traveling in Asia -- 25 in Shanghai -- and three were in Africa.

"The team can see if something is happening in a city, like an earthquake or a coup," Rackley said. "They're able to reach out to people in those places, sometimes before they even know something is happening. And we can give them steps to take to keep them safe."

When terrorists attacked Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008, workers at the Command Center were the first to alert a Target employee in that area.

Target then created a travel advisory council to assess threat levels and determine whether travel to certain areas is "business critical" or should be restricted, spokeswoman Anne Zeltinger said.

Big emphasis on the weather

Weather is a big focus of the operation. Houston-based ImpactWeather has created weather monitoring and forecasting tools specifically for the retailer.

While National Weather Service forecasts of hurricanes come with a cone of uncertainty around them that leads businesses to board up their stores, Target's in-house weather service provides specific geographic coordinates and wind speed around its stores, sometimes allowing them to stay open longer and to open faster afterward, Rackley said.

He said Target has made sure its systems coordinate with the federal government's. How often is the retailer in communication with agencies from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) to county health officials tracking the swine flu? "Constantly," he said.

"By making those connections with the agencies ahead of time, they know who we are, what our trucks look like and how it's going to get there," Rackley said. "We're not picking up the phone after something happens and someone's asking, 'Who are you?'"

The retailer has seats on all of the state's emergency coordinating councils, Rackley said. In early September, Target hosted a workshop on crisis preparedness with the Department of Homeland Security and the Conference Board, a trade group of senior executives at 1,600 corporations in 60 nations.

FEMA officials declined to talk directly about the partnership with Target. But Jeanie Moore, who heads the agency's private sector division, commended the retailer in an internal Target magazine for its work this spring when parts of Minnesota and North Dakota were flooded.

Daily conference calls helped the agency better understand "what was happening on the ground and what the communities' needs were," Moore wrote.

"Katrina raised expectations about what a government response should look like, and what role we play in communities," Rackley said. "That has changed over the years, I think. Communities have an expectation for us, that by being there, we have a responsibility to help them recover quickly."

Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335