Although William did not come to Beijing for any official visit, the public's attention was no less than a foreign leader's state visit.
The next day, Li Mu took William to visit Taobao, as well as Taobao Logistics' warehouse center and logistics distribution center in Beijing.
William was shocked by Taobao's warehouse center and logistics distribution center.
During this time, Senior Brother Liu had put all his energy into the optimization and improvement of the logistics system. Now, the fleet size of Taobao Logistics, the cargo warehouse resources, and the automatic sorting system all over the country were rapidly growing.
Coupled with the rapid development of Taobao's business, there were more and more online shopping users in China, so Taobao Logistics had a huge order volume. One-third of the orders were shipped by Taobao itself or Taobao's warehouse, and the remaining two-thirds were shipped by C2C sellers.
The huge volume of orders gave Taobao Logistics a strong support for its development. Therefore, Liu Shixiong's warehouse center and distribution center continued to expand. Some time ago, he added three more stages of orders to Germany for a total of 15 automatic sorting systems. In the future, all of them would be delivered to cities in Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.
When William arrived at the Beijing distribution center, he was completely stunned by the modern logistics scene in front of him.
A large number of parcels were unpacked, sorted, and repacked here. Then, with the help of the logistics management system developed by Makino Technology for Taobao Logistics, the status of each parcel was recorded and updated in real time.
William looked at the countless parcels shuttling quickly on the belt conveyor and said to Li Mu in amazement, "I feel like I've traveled more than ten years in the future. I always feel that such an advanced and efficient logistics method is not a product of this era at all …"
Li Mu smiled and said, "Most of the equipment you see is produced in Germany. This set of equipment has been in existence in Germany since 2000. In fact, it's not a very great thing. The main reason why it hasn't been promoted very quickly around the world is that most countries don't have such a great demand for the transportation capacity of small items at present, and the requirement for efficiency is not so high. The key reason why we use such equipment and develop automation to the extreme is that our demand for the transportation capacity of small items is too great and the requirement for efficiency is too high. It's so great that it exceeds that of any country in the world."
Li Mu's words were not nonsense. Taobao Logistics now carried the daily online transportation of tens of millions of Hua Xia's online users, and the order volume was basically close to Taobao's in 2008-2010. This data was very frightening. It meant that the growth of demand was five or six years ahead of schedule, which forced the solution to the demand to be five or six years ahead.
Looking at the current global e-commerce retail market, no country could compare to the current Taobao. Other than Hua Xia, the largest online retail market was the US, but the order volume was less than a quarter of Hua Xia's.
Moreover, there was something very strange about the e-commerce industry in the US. Regardless of whether it was the platform, the seller, or the buyer, they all had very high requirements for the efficiency of logistics.
Even after more than ten years, the logistics efficiency of Hua Xia's e-commerce was far ahead of the rest of the world. Logistics companies like Shunfeng could already achieve 24-hour delivery between most cities in the country. This kind of efficiency was unimaginable in the US, and it was even more incomprehensible in Europe.
As expected, William did not quite understand Li Mu's explanation. He asked, "Li Zong, is the efficiency of this kind of small items so important? Hua Xia is so big. I don't think there's much difference between a two-day delivery and a four-day delivery. However, in order to achieve a two-day delivery, we need to invest a lot of money, manpower, and material resources. This will cause a huge waste of resources, right? "
Li Mu smiled and said, "Hua Xia is a country that is developing at a high speed. Do you know what a country that is developing at a high speed is most afraid of wasting?"
William asked tentatively, "Resources? Money? Or labor? "
"Neither." Li Mu shook his head and smiled. "It's time."
After saying that, Li Mu continued, "Look, Japan, Germany, and France all have their own high-speed railway technology. A normal train's speed is about 100 kilometers per hour, but a high-speed railway can reach more than 200 or even 300 kilometers per hour. When a train travels more than 200 kilometers per hour, the air resistance will increase the energy consumption by a huge amount. For example, a journey of 500 kilometers would take a normal railway five hours, but the energy consumption is only one-third of that of a high-speed railway. But a high-speed railway only takes an hour and 40 minutes, but the energy consumption is three times that of a normal railway. However, I believe that the latter is obviously more suitable for the future Hua Xia, because we are rushing for time."
William nodded, not fully understanding. But in reality, he could not understand Li Mu's extreme pursuit of efficiency.
The pace of life in Europe was not as fast as Hua Xia's in Beijing. Europe's demand for infrastructure and services was also not as crazy as Li Mu's. The starting point for Li Mu to build Taobao Logistics was not to say that it was the best in the world in terms of scale, but at least it was the best in terms of efficiency. There was no logistics company in the world that could compete with Taobao Logistics in terms of efficiency.
Li Mu said to William, "William, do you know why the United States created the Internet, but only Hua Xia can compete with them on the same stage, while Europe, Japan, and South Korea, which are equally developed, have not made any achievements in the Internet arena?"
William shook his head gently. "To be honest, Mr. Li, I don't know much about the Internet, so I can't really understand what you're saying."
Li Mu smiled and said, "Don't worry, let me tell you. In the past one or two hundred years of modern times, Hua Xia people have been used to catching up because of the backwardness of the country. The West used hundreds of years to pave the way for the industrial revolution, but Hua Xia only used a few decades. Although the overall progress of modernization is still lagging behind the West, we used 40 to 50 years to catch up with the West by more than 100 years, and this gap is still shrinking. This is due to our national characteristics of 'catching up.'"
Speaking up to this point, Li Mu sighed and said, "Look at our Internet. It only started at the end of the last century, but once it started, a hundred flowers blossomed. A large number of young people who had been to the West chose to return to China to start their own businesses, and they drew inferences from the business models created in the West. Take me for example, if I did not pursue efficiency to the extreme, then Makino Technology might only have one YY product now, and it would still be suppressed by Microsoft's MSN. Taobao might still be pincered by Amazon and eBay. Therefore, we must think about changes and quickly find a breakthrough point to charge forward. This is also why we were able to step onto the international stage of the Internet industry after the United States."
In his previous life, only Hua Xia had really followed the rise of the Internet with the United States.
The whole of Europe, Japan, and South Korea had perfectly missed the great opportunity of the rise of the Internet. On the one hand, this was due to their obedience and acceptance of the American Internet market, and on the other hand, it was due to their own neglect of efficiency.
The first generation of Internet people in Hua Xia was indeed amazing. From the first day they came into contact with the Internet, it was as if they were injected with chicken blood. They worked hard to start their own businesses, and in a few years, they completed the path that other countries took more than ten years to complete. Even without Li Mu, a large number of amazing people, a large number of new product models, and a large number of large companies that were listed in the United States and Hong Kong would emerge from Hua Xia's Internet.
Just like the Hua Xia high-speed rail, from the construction of the first high-speed rail to the total mileage of the high-speed rail surpassing the total mileage of the other countries in the world, it took Hua Xia less than ten years. This was the pinnacle of the nation's' catching up 'skills.
After that, Li Mu took William to visit the warehouse next to the distribution center. The huge warehouse once again gave William a strong shock.
Today, Taobao's warehouse could only be done with information technology, but it could not be automated. Even so, the combination of shelves that were more than ten meters high and easily seven or eight levels made William dumbfounded.
The current operating model of Taobao's warehouse was the storage software combined with modular shelf management.
For example, a single warehouse had a total of 20 shelves from A to T. Each shelf was divided into eight levels vertically and 20 horizontal boxes horizontally. Each box had the same volume and size, and each box stored the same type or brand of products.
In this way, the goods in the shelves had a clear coordinate information. For example, cooking oil was in A515, where A represented shelf A, 5 represented the fifth level, and 15 represented the 15th box.
The information of A515 was recorded in the storage software. When cooking oil entered the warehouse, the system would instruct the warehouseman to store the product in A515. When there was an order for cooking oil to leave the warehouse, the system would also instruct the warehouseman to go to A515 to pick up the product.
If it was a fully automated warehouse, the goods could be stored in A515, or the goods could be picked up from A515. However, at this stage, there was no automated equipment in the world that could fully meet the logistics needs of Taobao. The German side was also in the trial production stage, so the storage was still semi-automated at the moment.
The so-called semi-automation was that there was a track between every two shelves, and the track was matched with two elevators. For example, there was a track between shelves A and B, and there was an elevator at each end. One elevator was responsible for the first to the tenth shelf, and the other for the eleventh to the twentieth shelf. Each elevator could lift from the first floor to the eighth floor.
The elevator was manually operated. When A515 picked up the goods, the driver of the second elevator at the back would directly input the location of A515, and the elevator would rise to a height of five floors and come to the front of the 15th box. After the precise positioning, the goods would be picked up manually.
However, even if it was not fully automated, the efficiency was already amazing. A large number of elevators rushed back and forth on the track, up and down, taking out all kinds of goods, and then transporting them from the two ends of the shelves to the conveyor belt. Then, other staff would pack and sort the goods. The efficiency was much higher than purely manual labor.
William stood under the huge elevator and watched the operator busily working. He exclaimed, "The scene in front of me is like watching a sci-fi movie. It's unbelievable …"
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