As I recall the days of yesteryear, when you "ordered" something it was via snail mail, and order processing/delivery took weeks. WEEKS! In fact, six weeks wasn't considered a "long" total turnaround time.
Not that I'm complaining... in many respects it seems that the world in which we live is spiraling out of control. Its nice that there seems to be one small but important area- item shipping- that our civilization seems to have actually perfected in the past few decades.
:
:Not that I'm complaining... in many respects it seems that the world in which we live is spiraling out of control. Its nice that there seems to be one small but important area- item shipping- that our civilization seems to have actually perfected in the past few decades.
CV:
On a Friday, back in Februrugly, I came home to find a river of water running out of my laundry room (hot water, of course) so I shut off the valve and had a drink (or several), so over the weekend I got over being mad and found that it was a very easy thing to replace the solenoid valves that had frozen. On Sunday night I ordered a replacement valve from a company I found on the internet, Part Select, and on Tuesday morning, A FedEx guy was at my door with my part.
:
Three major things have changed. First off we don't usually send a check via the mail now (which cuts the time almost in half) and mail is not predominantly based on ground transportation now. Finally most facilities have computerized order and logistics systems. No more passing slips of paper around and searching the warehouse manually for the part. The computer tells you what warehouse, aisle and bin to find it in and how many are in it (well in theory, as well all know parts do sprout legs and move at night).
Richard
Richard:
During my last few years at Delta, we had such a system in our giant maintenance base in Atlanta. If , he would go to the shop computer terminal and a shop mechanic needed a part that was stocked in stores, he would type in the in the manufacturer's part number, company part number, and quantity.
Over in the stores department, there was a HUGE warehouse containing maybe millions of parts, engine, hydraulic, fuel, electronic, hardware, office supplies,toilet tissue, and who knows what all. A robot would go down an aisle and up to a shelf and pull out a tray having maybe a dozen boxes of different parts. A human would select the proper part from one of the boxes, check the numbers and quantity, put it in a paper sack, staple it shut along with the ID printout, drop it on a conveyer belt and it would go to be put in in a pneumatic tube (or shipped to another city), and sent to his shop. When it all worked right, you might have your part from half a mile away in less than a minute. Usually, the robots would bring parts faster than the humans could sort them, and once a jam started, the whole system would slow down. If it was too lsarge for the pneumatic tube, we had a fleet of battery powered vehicles that brought the larger parts, of course that took longer and gave one some legal goof-0ff time while waiting for parts. It was very interesting and I somtimes really miss those days.
Lewis
: