Although William's visit to China does not have any official background, the public's attention is no less than that of state visits by foreign leaders.
The next day, Li Mu took William to visit Taobao, as well as Taobao Logistics' warehousing center and logistics distribution center in Yanjing.
Although what shocked William was Taobao's warehousing center and logistics distribution center.
Brother Liu has devoted all his energy to the optimization and improvement of the logistics system during this period. Now, Taobao Logistics' fleet size, belly warehouse resources, and automatic sorting systems across the country are all growing rapidly.
Coupled with the rapid development of Taobao's business, there are more and more domestic online shopping users, so the entire Taobao logistics has a huge order volume, one-third of which are self-operated by Taobao or shipped using Taobao warehousing, and the remaining three Two-thirds are shipped by C2C sellers.
The huge amount of order support has given strong support to the development of Taobao Logistics. Therefore, Brother Liu’s warehousing center has continued to expand, and the distribution center has also continued to expand. Some time ago, he added three stages of automatic sorting to Germany, with a total of 15 lines. All orders from the system will be placed in cities in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Shanghai in the future.
When William came to the sorting center of Yanjing Distribution Center, he was completely stunned by the modern logistics scene in front of him.
A large number of packages are unpacked, sorted and repacked here, and then with the help of the logistics management system developed by Makino Technology for Taobao Logistics, the status of each package is recorded and updated in real time.
William watched countless packages quickly shuttle on the belt conveyor, and said to Li Mu in amazement: "I feel as if I have been transported more than ten years later. I always feel that such an advanced and efficient logistics method is not a product of this era at all. …”
Li Mu smiled and said: "Most of the equipment you see are produced in Germany. This set of equipment was already available in Germany before 2000. In fact, it is not a great thing. The reason why it has not been promoted globally very quickly is that The main reason is that in most countries, the current demand for small logistics capacity is not that big, and the efficiency requirements are not that high. The most important reason why we need to use such equipment and develop automation to the extreme is The reason is that our demand for small logistics capacity is too high and our efficiency requirements are too high, exceeding that of any other country in the world."
Li Mu’s words are not just words. Taobao Logistics now carries the daily online shopping and transportation of tens of millions of online shopping users in China. The order volume is basically close to the status of Taobao from 2008 to 2010. This data is very scary. It means that the speed of demand growth has been advanced. Five or six years, this forces the solution to demand to be implemented five or six years in advance.
As far as the current global e-commerce retail market is concerned, no country can match the current Taobao. Apart from China, the largest online retail market is the United States, but the order volume is less than a quarter of China's.
Moreover, one thing that is very strange about American e-commerce is that platforms, sellers, and buyers all have very strict requirements for logistics efficiency.
Even more than ten years later, the logistics efficiency of Huaxia e-commerce is still far ahead of the world. Logistics companies like Shunfeng can already achieve 24-hour delivery between most cities in the country. This kind of efficiency would not be possible in the United States. It is unimaginable, and it is even more incomprehensible to Europeans.
Sure enough, William didn't quite understand Li Mu's explanation and asked: "Mr. Li, is the efficiency of this kind of small-piece logistics so important? China is so big, I think two-day delivery and four-day delivery actually don't matter. It’s a huge difference, but in order to achieve two-day delivery, a lot of money, manpower and material resources need to be invested, which will cause a huge waste of resources, right?”
Li Mu smiled and said: "China is a country that is developing at a rapid pace. Do you know what a rapidly developing country is most afraid of wasting?"
William asked tentatively: "Resources? Money? Or labor force?"
"No." Li Mu shook his head and said with a smile, "It's time."
After that, Li Mu added: "Look, Japan, Germany, and France all have their own high-speed railway technology. The average train speed is only about 100 kilometers per hour, but the high-speed railway can reach more than 200 or even 300 kilometers per hour. , when the train travels more than 200 kilometers, air resistance will increase the huge energy consumption. For example, for the same distance of 500 kilometers, the ordinary railway takes five hours, but the energy consumption is only one-third of the high-speed railway. One, but the high-speed railway only takes one hour and forty minutes and consumes three times more energy than ordinary railways. However, I believe the latter is obviously more suitable for China in the future because we have to compete for time."
William nodded as if he understood, but in fact, he could not understand Li Mu's extreme pursuit of efficiency.
The pace of life of Europeans is far less fast than that of China's Yanjing, and Europe's requirements for many infrastructure or services are far less perverted than that of Li Mu. The starting point of Li Mu's creation of Taobao Logistics cannot be said to lead the world in terms of scale, but at least it It leads the world in terms of efficiency. No logistics company in the world can compete with Taobao Logistics in terms of efficiency.
Li Mu said to William: "William, do you know why the United States created the Internet, but only China can compete with them on the same stage, while Europe, Japan and South Korea, which are also economically developed, have failed to make any achievements on the Internet stage?"
William shook his head slightly: "To be honest, Mr. Li, I don't know much about the Internet, so I don't quite understand what you said."
Li Mu smiled and said: "It doesn't matter, let me tell you. In the past two hundred years in modern times, the Chinese people have been accustomed to catching up in work because of the country's backwardness. Western countries have spent hundreds of years laying the groundwork for industry. The revolution took China only a few decades. Although the overall process of modernization still lags behind that of the West, it took us 40 to 50 years to catch up with the gap of more than a hundred years in the West, and this gap is still narrowing. This is due to our national characteristic of 'catching up'."
Speaking of this, Li Mu sighed: "Look at our Internet. It only started to take off at the end of the last century, but once it started, a hundred flowers blossomed. We have a large number of young people who have been to the West and choose to return to China to start their own businesses, and they have adopted the business model pioneered in the West. To draw inferences, take myself as an example. If I had not pursued extreme efficiency, Makino Technology might have only one YY model now, and it would be under pressure from Microsoft's MSN. Taobao might also be flanked by Amazon and eBay. So we must think about changes and quickly find a breakthrough to attack fiercely. This is why we can enter the international stage of the Internet industry after the United States."
In the previous life, China was the only country that really followed the United States in seizing the rise of the Internet.
The entire Europe, Japan and South Korea have completely missed the huge opportunity of the rise of the Internet. On the one hand, this is due to their compliance and acceptance of the US Internet market, and on the other hand, it is due to their own neglect of efficiency.
The first generation of Internet users in China are indeed amazing. From the first day they came into contact with the Internet, they were like being given a shot of chicken blood. They worked hard to start a business. In just a few years, they completed the journey in other countries that took more than ten years to complete. Even without Li Mu, China Internet will still have a large number of talented people, a large number of novel product models, and a large number of large companies listed in the United States and Hong Kong.
Just like China's high-speed railway, it took China less than ten years from the completion of its first high-speed railway to the total mileage of high-speed railways exceeding the sum of other countries in the world. This is the pinnacle of the nation's "catch-up" skills.
Later, Li Mu took William to visit the storage center next to the distribution center. The huge storage center once again gave William a strong shock.
Nowadays, Taobao's warehousing can only be informatized and cannot be automated. However, even so, William was stunned by the combination shelves with a height of more than ten meters and often seven or eight floors.
The current operating model adopted by Taobao warehousing is warehousing software combined with modular shelf management.
For example, a single warehouse has a total of 20 shelves from A to T. Each shelf is divided into 8 layers vertically and 20 grids horizontally. Each grid has the same volume and size, and each grid stores products of the same type or brand.
In this way, the goods will have clear coordinate information on the shelf. For example, if the edible oil is at A515, A represents the A row of shelves, 5 represents the fifth floor, and 15 represents the 15th grid.
The information of A515 is recorded in the warehousing and warehousing software. When there is edible oil warehousing and warehousing, the system will instruct the warehousing clerk to put the products into A515. When there is an order that requires edible oil to be shipped out, the system The warehouse clerk will also be instructed to go to A515 to pick up the goods.
If it is a fully automated warehousing, warehousing goods to A515 or picking up goods from A515 can be completed automatically. However, at this stage, there is no automated equipment in the world that can fully meet Taobao's logistics needs. Germany is also in the trial production stage. Therefore, semi-automatic methods are currently used for warehousing in and out.
The so-called semi-automation means that there is a track in the middle of every two shelves, and the tracks are equipped with two elevators one behind the other. For example, there is a track in the shelves of rows A and B, and there is an elevator at each end, one is responsible for grids 1-10. The other one is responsible for grids 11-20, and each elevator can lift from the first floor to the eighth floor.
The elevator is manually controlled. When A515 picks up the goods, the driver of the second elevator at the back end directly inputs the position of A515. The elevator will rise to the height of the fifth floor and come to the front of the 15th grid. After precise positioning, the elevator will be Pickup is done manually.
However, even if full automation has not yet been achieved, this efficiency is already astonishingly high. A large number of elevators run back and forth on the track, up and down, take out various goods, and then transport them to the conveyor belt at both ends of the shelf, and then other work The efficiency of personnel packaging and sorting orders is much higher than that of pure manual labor.
William stood under the huge elevator, watching the operators constantly busy, and exclaimed: "The scene in front of me is like watching a science fiction movie, it's incredible..."
Li Mu smiled and said: "Believe me, if you come back in two years, the changes here will be even more than you imagine!"
(End of chapter)