Date: 26-10-2017
Source: The Economist
Surging demand requires new distribution methods
YANG MING IS standing beside his red electric tricycle in a courtyard in Beijing. A former factory worker from an industrial town outside the capital, he and dozens of other men are awaiting the arrival of a lorry. As it pulls in from JD’s warehouse, the men form an assembly line to unload boxes. They reload the packages to their tricycles and are off, weaving through the traffic. JD has about 400 such delivery stations in Beijing alone. Across the country, 2.5m couriers are at the ready to shuttle packages to their final destinations. When he first started several years ago Mr Yang made about 80 deliveries a day. Now the number is closer to 130 and still rising.
To a consumer, e-commerce’s rapid delivery seems like magic: a few clicks, and within an hour or two a package can land on your doorstep. Behind this, however, lies an enormous amount of investment, engineering and hard work as firms face ever-rising expectations of fast, cheap delivery. Delivery networks are likely to be strained as the volume of parcels grows. That is spurring new experiments in logistics, some mundane (picking up parcels in stores) and some apparently mad (Amazon patents for underwater warehouses). Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »