Chapter 1604 A Nation that Is Good at Catching Up

Although William's visit to China did not have any official Beijing, the public's attention was in no way inferior to that of a foreign leader's state visit.

The next day, Li Mu took William to visit Taobao.com, as well as the warehouse center and logistics distribution center of Taobao Logistics in Yanjing.

Although William was shocked, it was Taobao's warehouse center and logistics distribution center.

Brother Liu has devoted all his energy to the optimization and improvement of the logistics system. Now, Taobao Logistics' fleet size, belly warehouse resources, and automatic sorting systems across the country are all in a period of rapid growth.

Coupled with the rapid development of Taobao's business, there are more and more domestic online shoppers, so the entire Taobao logistics has a huge order volume, one third of which is self-operated by Taobao or using Taobao warehousing for delivery, 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 warehouse center has been continuously expanded, and the distribution center has also been continuously expanded. Some time ago, three stages were added to Germany, totaling 15 automatic sorting lines. The orders of the system will all be placed in cities in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Shanghai in the future.

When William came to the sorting center in 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 repackaged here, and then with the help of the logistics management system developed by Muye Technology for Taobao Logistics, the status of each included is recorded and updated in real time.

Seeing countless parcels zipping fast on the belt conveyor, William said to Li Mu in amazement: "I feel like I have arrived more than ten years later, and I always feel that such an advanced and efficient logistics method is not a product of the current era at all. …”

Li Mu said with a smile: "Most of the equipment you see are made in Germany. This equipment was already available in Germany before 2000. In fact, it's not a great thing. The main reason is that in the vast majority of countries, the current demand for small logistics capacity is not so large, and the requirements for efficiency are not so high. The reason why we use such equipment and develop automation to the extreme is the most critical. The reason is that we have too much demand for small logistics capacity and too high efficiency requirements, which are bigger than any other country in the world.”

Li Mu's remarks are not cavalier. Taobao Logistics now carries the daily online shopping transportation of tens of millions of online shoppers in China. The order volume is basically close to the state of Taobao in 2008-2010. This data is very scary, it means that the speed of demand growth has been advanced. Five or six years, this forces the way to solve the demand to be five or six years ahead of schedule.

As far as the current global e-commerce retail market is concerned, no country can compare to the current Taobao.

In addition to Huaxia, the largest online retail market is the United States, but the order volume is not as good as a quarter of Huaxia.

Moreover, one thing that is very strange about e-commerce in the United States is that regardless of the platform, the seller or the buyer, the requirements for logistics efficiency are very Buddhist.

Even after more than ten years, the logistics efficiency of Huaxia e-commerce is still far ahead of the world. Logistics companies like Shunfeng can already deliver 24 hours between most cities in the country. If this efficiency is placed in the United States, it is fundamental Unthinkable, and 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 small piece of logistics so important? Huaxia is so big, I think two-day delivery and four-day delivery are actually nothing. There is a big difference, but in order to achieve two-day delivery, a lot of money and manpower and material resources need to be invested, which will cause a huge waste of resources, right?"

Li Mu said with a smile, "Huaxia is a rapidly developing country. Do you know what a rapidly developing country is most afraid of wasting?"

William asked tentatively, "Resources? Money? Or labor?"

"Neither." Li Mu shook his head and smiled, "It's time."

After that, Li Mu added: "Look, Japan, Germany, and France all have their own high-speed railway technology. The speed of ordinary trains is only about 100 kilometers per hour, but high-speed railways can reach more than 200 or even 300 kilometers per hour. , when the train runs for more than 200 kilometers, the 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 the energy consumption is three times that of ordinary railways, but I believe the latter is obviously more suitable for China in the future, because we have to race against time.”

William nodded in understanding, but in fact, he did not understand Li Mu's extreme pursuit of efficiency.

The pace of life of Europeans is far less than that of Huaxia Yanjing, and the pace of Europe's requirements for many infrastructure or services is far less perverted than that of Li Mu. Li Mu's starting point for Taobao logistics cannot be said to lead the world in terms of scale, but at least It leads the world in efficiency. There is no logistics company in the world that can compete with Taobao Logistics in 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, failed to make achievements on the Internet stage?"

William shook his head gently: "To be honest, Mr. Li, I don't know much about the Internet, so I don't quite understand what you said."

Li Mu said with a smile: "It doesn't matter, let me tell you, in the past 200 years in modern times, Chinese people have become accustomed to catching up in work because of the backwardness of the country. Western countries have spent hundreds of years paving the way for industry. The revolution in China only took a few decades. Although the overall process of modernization is still far behind that of the West, it took us 40 to 50 years to catch up with the gap of more than 100 years in the West, and the gap is still shrinking. This is precisely because of our 'catch-up' national character."

Speaking of this, Li Mu sighed: "Look at our Internet, it only started at the end of the last century, but a hundred flowers blossomed at the same time. We have a large number of young people who have been to the West who choose to return to China to start their own businesses, and in the business model created by the West. To draw inferences from other facts, take myself as an example, if I don’t have extreme pursuit of efficiency, then Makino Technology may only have one YY now, and it is still being suppressed by Microsoft’s MSN, and Taobao may also be attacked by Amazon and eBay. Therefore, we must think about changes and quickly find a breakthrough to fight hard, which is why we can enter the international stage of the Internet industry after the United States."

In the past life, only China was the only country that really followed the United States to seize the tide of the rise of the Internet.

The whole of Europe, Japan and South Korea have completely missed the huge opportunity of the rise of the Internet. On the one hand, it stems from their obedience and acceptance of the American Internet market, and on the other hand, it stems from their own neglect of efficiency.

The first generation of Internet people in China are really amazing. From the first day they came into contact with the Internet, they were like being beaten by chicken blood. They worked hard to start a business. In a few years, they went to other countries for more than ten years. Even without Li Mu, Huaxia Internet will still have a large number of talented people, a large number of novel product models, and a large number of large companies that go public in the United States and Hong Kong.

Just like the Huaxia high-speed rail, from the completion of the first high-speed rail to the total mileage of the high-speed rail surpassing the sum of other countries in the world, the time spent by Huaxia is less than ten years. 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.

Today, Taobao warehousing can only be informatized and cannot be automated, but even so, the combined shelves that are more than ten meters high and often rise to seven or eight floors still make William stunned.

The operation mode adopted by Taobao Warehousing at this stage is the combination of warehouse entry and exit software with modularized shelf management.

For example, a single warehouse has a total of 20 shelves from A to T. Each shelf is vertically divided into 8 layers and horizontally divided into 20 grids. Each grid has the same volume and size, and each grid stores products of the same type or brand.

In this way, the goods have clear coordinate information on the shelf. For example, edible oil is in A515, A represents the shelf in row A, 5 represents the fifth floor, and 15 represents the 15th grid.

The information of A515 is recorded in the warehousing software. When there is edible oil stored in the warehouse, the system will instruct the warehousing staff to put the product into the A515, and when there is an order that requires edible oil to be released from the warehouse, the system will The warehouse staff will also be instructed to pick up the goods at A515.

If it is fully automated warehousing, it can be automated to store goods to A515 or pick up goods from A515, but at this stage, there is no automation equipment that can fully meet the needs of Taobao logistics in the world, and Germany is also in the trial production stage. Therefore, the warehousing and warehousing are still semi-automated.

The so-called semi-automation means that there is a track in the middle of every two shelves, and the track is matched with two elevators in front and rear. The other is responsible for 11-20 grids, and each elevator can achieve lifting from the first floor to the eighth floor.

The lift is manually controlled. When the A515 picks up the goods, the driver of the second lift at the rear directly enters the position of the A515, and the lift will rise to the height of the fifth floor and come to the front of the 15th grid. Pickup is done manually.

But even if full automation has not been achieved, this efficiency is already amazingly high, with a large number of elevators running back and forth on the track, up and down, taking out various goods, and then transporting them to the conveyor belt at both ends of the shelf, and then other work. Personnel pack and sort orders, which is much more efficient than pure manual labor.

Standing under the huge elevator, William watched the operator keep busy and exclaimed: "The scene in front of me is like watching a science fiction movie, it's incredible..."

Li Mu smiled and said, "Trust me, if you come back in two years, the changes here will be more than you can imagine!"