Denkanstoss on Tour Field Trip Bad Hersfeld/Jena/Meiningen @ Amazon, Jenotik, Carl Zeiss, Adva Optical 3 March 2017 Jan Neynaber Welcome to the middle of Germany in Bad Hersfeld. The German book distribution organization LIBRI started its business here 43 years ago with the guarantee to deliver a book into any book shop in Germany within 1 day. Right beside LIBRI in 1994 Amazon opened up its first warehouse. Today the main warehouse with 110.000 sqm lies on a mountain top near Bad Hersfeld. Amazon is so prominent that no signs are on the street to direct you there. Amazon feeds itself with solar panels which provide 25% of electricity needed. You have to ring a simple bell to get into this fort Knox.
You enter a very simple world. Dressing room, cafeteria and a row of 30 seats which are packed with people that wish to work for Amazon. There is not much money spend on hierarchy. No investor relation, no line manager. A woman guides us who started as a Picker 7 years ago. The hierarchy is divided into 4 different colors. And these different colors are displayed on the badges every person wears. All people call each other by the first name. It is the most easy way as 50 nations work under one roof. Taylorism has reached its peak here: All working steps are very simple and pictures show the employees what to do and explain them where to put the packages. On each shelf there are 6 levels and each level has its own color. By that items can be stored, found and picked much faster.
Amazon has a chaotic order system. What does that mean? The process of in and out bounding orders is too complex to force it into a logic order system for the items to be stored in a symmetric manner. The storage people are allowed to drop goods where they like (there are 2 Mio shelf spaces in the warehouse!) and where enough space can be found. They scan the item and they scan the storage space. When pickers start to collect the clients orders a software program gives them the shortest way through the labyrinth on a display of their scanner.
When one client orders more than one item a little temporary nest nest built to collect all items before they go into the packaging. Without scanners all workers would be lost. General: 1500 sorter, picker and packer work here. Each of them walks between 10-20 kilometers a day and 65.000 packages are processed each day. The working shifts vary between 6 o clock and 23 o clock. No package is allowed to weigh more than 15 kilos to save workers back. Amazon Hersfeld is in charge for cloth. Every brand you know is available here. The brand owners send goods free of charge which Amazon has ordered. The goods arrive at the warehouse at 6 o clock in the morning. Every good is unpacked, gets its own scanner bar for identification. Goods thatare already ordered by a client get into the black box, goods for storage into the blue box and new items the system does not recognize at the arrival are getting photographed and are listed into the Amazon assortment. Through this Amazon has the almost perfect world wide list of available items.
Then the storage people receive the goods. Every good is measured and put on a scale. Through this the software decides where the storage guy shall put the item. These informations are used at the end once again.
When you order something at Amazon the picker receives an order slip which tells him where to collect the items. Such picking/ collecting process is done within 40 minutes. The collected goods are driven around in a plastic lorry and brought to the vast packaging department. Here the software calculates the items and tells the packer which box he must use. Even the length of the scotch tape is calculated and is given to the packer automatically.
Amazon is the perfect symbiosis of cheap labor force and a perfect software system.
If your kids are lazy in school you can tell them: Better watch out or you will end up working at Amazon Next stop is Jena the center for any kind of optical equipment in Germany. We receive a warm welcome on the screen at Jenoptik. Jenoptik contains 3 business units with each containing 2-3 smaller units. Under this umbrella of holdings we visit the automotive unit first. Jenoptik uses Laser technique to burn and cut holes in already existing forms. This comes cheaper than building forms. In automotive the clients can order so many different varieties of chassis and interiors that it is almost impossible to have all these forms on stock. Instead OEM chose a basic form and if the client has any special wishes the holes and drills are added at a later stage of the production OEMs order a full room at Jenoptik which have 2-4 laser arms. Then a software is programmed that tells the arms how to move around the aluminum, steel, carbon fibre or plastic part. Then the laser arms burn the holes and drills into the objects Since the steel is thinner today but therefore stiffer the OEMs need more laser to cut the steels according to their needs. All classical industry techniques such as stamping, welding, cutting, perforating, molding can be replaced by laser technology If you see that key etchnology player from Germany such as Epcos, Rofin Sinar, Gildemeister, Kuka, Biotest, SLM have all been bought up Jenoptik would also be such a candidate. They are only protected by their military exporsue.
There is a mountain ridge on the former inner German border. In this no man s land Adva is located. There used to be a VEB (volkseigener Betrieb) kommunistic owned company called Robotron. After the reunification people with money helped socialistic engineers to become entrepreneurs. And the view goes over 100 Kilometers far.
Embedded in this surrounding these people work. They have a very special know how on treating optical glass fibre. They fiddle together special mother boards/ cards which enhance the speed of data trafffic. General: Telcos dig optical fibre for the transport of data. As these are not fast enough you can speed up the transport. Every 300KM the power of light running through the fibre is getting less intensive. To keep up the speed light can be split and runs faster. Adva has the knowledge how to split the light and how to bundle it again. Data center and server farms need to split the data when they leave the server and need to bundle the data at the arrival. Adva produces the boxes that telcos, banks, and server farm owners need to install to ensure speedy data traffic.
At this box 21 cards can be inserted like the beemaster. The empty cards are called blind cards. Later this space can used to pimp up the box. Adva has the special know how to produce the cards. Clients have very different requirments regarding the data volumes, speed or how to encrypt data. That is why boxes differ from each other.
The employees sitting downstairs need to taylor made the cards for many clients. On every table they have focal lenses, microscopes and tweezer to prepare the cards. Since Edward Snowden many clients pay more attention to data security. With special cards in the box they can crypt and encrypt the data. Also they can cross check whether data has leaked on the fibre highway from point A to point B. With the new Cloud Connect box Adva bundles its preparation knowledge to offer a box with cards that ist faster and less energy consuming. Here Adva has a innovative gap of 2-3 years.
When we came down the ridge we saw this sign: Here Germany was divided until December 10 th 1989 14 o clock