FedEx Memphis

15 responses to “FedEx Memphis”

1. 

   heet_myser

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:16 am

   There’s a company I love called LensRentals.com (do you know it?) that’s located in Memphis. It seems to me they have a great competitive advantage, being located right next to a FedEx hub.

   http://www.lensrentals.com/

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2. 

   Pieces of Eye

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:44 am

   Egads, It sounds like these people have to clear their personal schedules to accommodate an unknown work time for a moderate adjustment to FedEx’s bottom line just to come in and perform a mechanical task? I hope its not as bad as it sounds… If a high speed camera can be made to detect defects in potato chips It seems reasonable that something could be made to locate bar-codes effectively.

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3. 

   solerena

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:57 am

   Very nice: TN .. memories and the package indeed…. castaway:D

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4. 

   Jeffrey Wallace

   Jan 17, 2012 at 7:39 am

   You still get plenty of defects in potato chips when you open a bag. I imagine that kind of accuracy (or lack there of) is enough for them to provide jobs to a large amount of people that can perform better than a machine. Besides I think more people would be crying foul about there "bottom line" if all those workers were laid off and replaced with robots.

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5. 

   rocketmavericks

   Jan 17, 2012 at 8:33 am

   Cool! I designed and built his first call and tracking center there, which was combined with IBM’s POS systems service and Kodak’s customer service system. It was pretty radical. I proposed applying nuclear war gaming prolog expert systems for business rule customization as a middleware business rule engine, with an Oracle back-end DB, and a virtualized radical front-end technology called Mosiac from some "radical" college student at Urbana by the name or Marc Andreessen. The technology was the pre-cursor to Netscape, and what resulted was the worlds first call center help desk system. The world of self-help customer service was born!!!

   Too bad they outsourced it all to India!!! Even had the worlds first wireless communication device, the IBM Brick than ran over an ARDIS radio network to co-ordinate customer service calls before data services were available on cellphones.

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6. 

   Astrocatou

   Jan 17, 2012 at 1:06 pm

   Thanks to technology they only need 10% as many employee’s as 30 years ago.
   But I can get my Lululemon pants (ordered on line,made in China) 3 days sooner…

   Is this really progress ?

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7. 

   ukweli

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:31 pm

   Even grocery stores have bar-code scanners from 2 and 3 directions now.

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8. 

   jurvetson

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:38 pm

   yup… and notice how you still have check out clerks who still hold each item up to be scanned.

   At FedEx, I’m guessing that the odd package with the label facing down was the problem (but even that should be solvable given how much they were willing to invest in logistics optimization.

   [http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocketmavericks] – did the system ask if you would like to play a game?

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9. 

   linux-works

   Jan 17, 2012 at 4:54 pm

   human slaves: "you must report in to work today at 6.37 and one third, today".

   my god, what have we become. this was something I didn’t really want to know (but kind of glad I know, now, I guess).

   reminds me of ‘forced vacation’ that the dot-com companies tried out (maybe still do, don’t know). whenever their books needed a boost, they’d demand employees take this or that day (or days!) off to save money. both sun and sgi did crap like that, iirc. pissed me off greatly to see the companies ‘optimizing’ the employees’ home time like that.

   this is why we created unions all those decades ago. seems we still need some way to keep huge companies in-check with what we expect from a modern working-man’s life style.

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10. 

    jurvetson

    Jan 17, 2012 at 5:18 pm

    …what more in the name of love…

    

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11. 

    Astrocatou

    Jan 17, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works]
    For some retired folks its a seasonal (Xmas) thing to put in 4-6 weeks of work at FedEx,…while living in a trailer…
    Supplements the depleted retirement fund.

    Grapes of Wrath 2011…..

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12. 

    ukweli

    Jan 17, 2012 at 6:27 pm

    Extreme efficiency involving humans, either serving it or being served by it, is usually kind of ugly. Automated traffic, just-in-time delivery of everything, vertical density and all that will be required to support the world population at present American living standards are things I love to hate thinking about.

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13. 

    linux-works

    Jan 17, 2012 at 6:32 pm

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveh56] I would like to think of people being more than just ‘clock winders’ (so to speak).

    machines should work for people. it seems sometimes we have things backwards.

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14. 

    solerena

    Jan 17, 2012 at 7:27 pm

    again, looking at bigger picture – if one day humanity will have all routine tasks outsourced to machines and such and can expand into infinite space of outerspace and the only thing will be left for us is keep imagining a better and brighter world/worlds….

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15. 

    jgury

    Jan 18, 2012 at 6:42 pm

    That is a big expense in RFID upgrade tech relative to cost/benefit of less employees and just printing more bar labels or QRs. I think Wal Mart is all RFID now but that is a way different case.

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