Name: TEDx】讓存貨行走與對話｜Mick Mountz｜TEDxBoston--------。 (【TEDx】Let the inventory walk and talk | Mick Mountz | TEDxBoston)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:57:34.000Z
Duration: 12 min 10 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

For the next few minutes I want to talk to you about...

or share with you a breakthrough new approach

for managing items of inventory inside of a warehouse.

We're talking about a Pick, Pack and Ship setting here.

this solution involves hundreds of mobile robots,

moving around a warehouse. And I'll get to the solution.

about the last time  you ordered something online.

and you decided that you absolutely had to have this red t-shirt.

So click you put it into your shopping cart.

And then you decided that green pair of pants

So at this point you've assembled your order.

You didn't stop to think  for a moment that

And two days later, this package shows up on your doorstep.

And you open the box and like Wow, there's my goo.

Did you ever stop to think about how those items of inventory

actually found their way inside that box in the warehouse?

So I'm here to tell you  it's that guy right there.

in a distribution or order fulfillments setting.

Classically these pick workers will spend 60 to 70% of their day

They'll often walk as much as 5, 10 miles

Not only is this an unproductive way to fill orders,

it also turns out to be an unfulfilling way to fill orders.

So let me tell you where I first bumped into this problem.

I was out in the Bay area  in 1999-2000, the dot com boom.

I worked for a fabulously spectacular flame out called Webvan.

This company raised hundreds of millions of dollars with the notion that

And it really came down to the fact that we couldn't do it cost effectively.

Turns out e-commerce was something that was very hard and very costly.

In this particular instance we were trying to assemble 30 items of inventory

into a few totes, onto a van to deliver to the home.

And when you think about it, it was costing us $30.

that was costing us $1 to pick and pack into that tote.

And that's before we actually tried to deliver it to the home.

So long story short, during my 1-year at Webvan,

what I realized by talking to  all the material-handling providers

was that there was no solution designed specifically to solve each base picking.

Red item, green, blue, getting those 3 things in a box.

So we said, you know, there's just got to be a better way to do this.

Existing material handling was setup to pump

pallets and cases of goo to retail stores.

Of course Webvan went out of business and about a year and a half later,

I was still noodling on this problem. It was still nagging at me.

And I said "Let me just focus briefly on what I wanted as a pick worker."

I have an order here and what I want to do is I want to put

red, green and blue in this box right here.

What I need is a system where I put out my hand and poof!

the product shows up  and I pack it into the order,

"this would be a very operator-centric approach to solving the problem.

This is what I need. What technology is available to solve this problem?"

But as you can see, orders can come and go, product can come and go.

It allows us to focus on making the pick worker the center of the problem,

and providing them the tools to make them as productive as possible.

Well, actually it came from a brainstorming exercise,

probably a technique that many of you use,

but then test your ideas at the limits. Infinity, zero...

In this particular case, we challenged ourselves with the idea:

wWhat if we had to build a distribution center in China,

"what if it was zero dollars an hour for direct labor

and we could build a million square foot distribution center?"

So naturally that led to ideas that said:

"Let's put lots of people in the warehouse."

And I said: "hold on, zero dollars per hour,

10,000 workers to come to the warehouse every morning at 8:00 am,

walk into the warehouse and pickup 1 item of inventory

So you hold Captain Crunch, you hold the Mountain Dew,

If I need it, I'll call you, otherwise just stand there.

But when I need Diet Coke and I call you guys talk amongst yourselves,

Diet Coke walks up to the front, pick it, put it in the tote, away it goes."

Like wow, what if the products could walk and talk on their own?

That's a very interesting very powerful way

that we could potentially organize this warehouse.