By Paul Casebourne Engineered Solutions
With longer lasting food, genetic technology, sophisticated distribution systems, Satnav, internet, mobile phone technology and digitalisation how come we are at war with our own hardworking lean paid truckers???
Green Peace have come up with a formula which would theoretically reduce
pollution, congestion and the remaining will of all of us to continue to live and is about as welcome as a fart in a crowded lift, the vegetarian contingent would do even better on that score, given the incompatibility of the entire meat and dairy industry with the planet, the exotic fruits and foods which fly about our globe as an assumed right make it worse and the politicians seem to spend all their time in the operating theatre these days cleaning up one man made disaster after another and taking the blame for it too - so are we all doomed. Well yes I guess we are since only a few space travellers and Doctor Who have ever made it off this planet alive.
A great deal of this congestion is caused by customer care, the same people
demanding meal deals on wheels at times to suit them. Their own selfish
disorganisation, time limits and local authority rules on delivery times actually fuel the flames of the very thing we need to fix. The government are all breaking their necks to franchise and disenfranchise, subcontract, re contract and de centralise everything except common sense and the poor lorry driver gets it in the neck from irritable cyclists by parking across their concessionary cycle lane at 0700 hrs because that is the only place and time he can unload the vegetarian pizza and wine the same cyclist will collect on his way home tonight.
The road system is in meltdown why just stop at getting lorries off the road!!
The NHS, local education and our core schools and hospitals should go and have a look at what the NAAFI did, boy have they got it right! That is how to subcontract. The problem is making freedom of choice more efficient. There is a very simple solution.
Lorries are not the problem, we just don't use them intelligently, we need them.
Green Peace are right and the veggie folk live longer than the obsessive meat
eaters, I did a recent survey of my 90 year old vegan mother, who loves Crème Brule to prove that! We are too compartmentalised in our thinking, but there is an answer out there. 3663 say they just do what they are told very efficiently - you should ask them about the NAAFI contract if you want to know how to be a black belt in efficient distribution. So the answer is not to take transport off the roads but to use what is out there more efficiently.
As a materials handling engineer I see the transport system as a vast conveyance
which works really well just as long as we all pay attention and nobody wants to get off it. The infrastructure concludes in all our major towns and cities and that is where we unleash hell, the last mile or so.
The fork truck and the container have been one of the biggest breakthroughs in
combining power technologies ever and have revolutionised our ability to feed, cloth, entertain, house, protect and generally civilise our selves. Let me ask some multibillion pound questions here and see if I can get your attention:-
What do you see when you look at a bus?
What else could our tired out deserted pubs and corner shops do?
What is the one place you pass every day or week?
Is re-useable better than recyclable?
Could your postman also be the bin man?
What happens when rush hour is over?
Are there simpler ways to containerise without pallets to make distribution more penetrative, more repetitive and more productive in both directions - Russian doll distribution?
I spoke to a man who actually has the answers to these questions and can do it
without making the world redundant in the process and extinguishing the Dragons'
flaring flame for investment. He sees the bus as a distribution system capable of self loading. The corner shop and pub as a servo - assisted DIY hub passed by
thousands everyday. The shopping centres are multi-temp single drop off collection zones, the forests can have a rest and go back to pit props and stop giving us pallets, the post man is the bin man and a lot of other men too and women, when rush hour ends the network starts a distribution service which obviates the need for city centre HGV traffic and employs the Lollypop person too….the last mile is the golden mile, and no need to retrain the driver, because the digitised process means he or she only need to know where to stop whilst they are loaded in under 30 seconds automatically - no paper or pallets - so no trees involved, there won't even be time to pick up a bacon butty!
The age of Micro logistics is upon us with all the opportunities and employment that will flood in with it, the lorry will be given a new role driven by the knights of the road, 3663 will be able to deliver faster and more often to the man with the bicycle who will never have his lane obstructed again by the poor driver who is just trying to do his job, for an owner who can only take deliveries on this day at that time because he has no storage facilities for his fresh basil for the Pizza. Green Peace will find another cause to fight and the government will tell the banks they own to put the money up to develop this new and exciting system to keep us all out of each others way and rebuild our tired overcrowded island, pay off our national debts and export the system to every country on the planet and not just hand over our heritage to our friends in China again and then wait 15 years whilst they pillage our steel industry to meet our standards. Please give this project to our engineers first not last like happened to the rail net works. You need engineers to do this and we have them too…the best and the best logistics people as well - with black belts and Ph.D's lets use them and start making things again we don't need a repeat of Rover, lets do this one ourselves, properly, we have a working idea.
If you want the right solutions you need to ask the right people. We are a much better investment than the sub-prime market and you won't have to wait 25 years to get your money back whilst you are waiting for your investments in wind and PV power to mature to top up the final tally of Subprime - Gate.
If anyone had told you about Nano Pods, 20 years ago you would have laughed, I
noticed their store was rocking in Newcastle this weekend, I used plastic to buy a Nano and there was no till in sight, it was already replaced before I left the store, it was done on a mobile phone device, by a man from New York who worked in 3 branches over here - No Really!!
Just remember you read about Micro logistics here first! This is not a passing fad, the professional guys in 3663 are already ahead of the game in mini logistics, they want their lorries working not irritating people in cities - there is nothing they don't know about distribution and you can be sure they have read this article and will be taking it seriously especially if they can add 50% to their volume per day. One other thing, it will build capacity into the system intelligently, It will cut journeys and take lorries off the road, or double the volumes of this sort of distribution from the same fleets…..Now are you interested?
If you would like to know more about Micro-Logistics then please contact me via my website www.engineeredsolutions.info and click on contact us I will be glad to pass your thoughts on to people who can really develop our distribution system. If you have any assignments you would like me to look into let me know, I am Paul Casebourne, I hope you found this article as engaging to read as it was challenging to write for you. Thank you.