Bring It On

source I am not a fan of seeing containers today as I have seen thousands of them over the years. Weather used to play havoc with our schedules as the delivery dates were never on time.

Company growth is good as long as the back end grows at the same time. I was involved with a massive expansion yet the facilities remained the same and that is not always possible or feasible. I used to laugh when I saw things happening as there was no thought put into how things are going to be accomplished and it was a kind of work it out as it happens. This is alright if you are sitting behind a desk in an office not actually dealing with these situations.
source Heavy winds didn't only stop the cranes from operating, but disrupted shipping entering the harbour. This is the harbour entrance blocked by a ship in difficulty.

About 5 years ago I stopped running the bicycle plant I was managing for my brother in law and it couldn't end soon enough for me. The problem is I was good at doing it and it grew from a side line of about 100 000 bikes per year to several million and the space we operated in didn't. Only in the last season did they move to what they thought was bigger premises but it still wasn't big enough. Nothing was going to be big enough as the time lines were that tight for the numbers involved.

The peak season was August, September and October as November was just too late to make things happen and usually those orders missed Christmas. Retail stores have their windows they operate within and deadlines for receiving stock. An item in a warehouse can take up to 3 weeks to actually reach the store. I found this crazy as it told me two things. One the warehouse manager was useless and secondly the buyers who ordered the stock had no clue either. Incompetence and a lack of understanding is rampant when you see things first hand.

Sometimes doing such a good job is not always great as people will take advantage of you. They expect you to get things done and aren't interested in how you get them done. Our warehouse and facility at the time was a pokey 30 000 square meter facility tapped onto the side of a 150 000 square meter distribution center. I shared our warehouse with other sections so it wasn't all mine even though they had no choice when it came to late October when my stock kind of went everywhere.

There was one particular night that things kind of peaked and the challenge was kicked out of me. I never get stressed as what is the point as the people who ordered all the stock are tucked up in their beds not giving a damn so why must I worry. If there was a problem I would wake them up and share my concerns no matter what time it is and it happened more than once.

That year problems were compounded by high winds at the container terminal in Durban. High winds meant the containers can't be off loaded and everything is shrunk into a tighter operating window. This is out of your hands and there is absolutely nothing you can do. When the window finally opens you know you are deep in the dwang and tell the trucking operators just to bring it on. You have to receive the stock so the sooner the better as the delivery dates still remain the same.

Every year we somehow managed and the orders just got bigger and bigger. I was told at the last minute that there was a special order placed on top of the normal Christmas order and it consisted of an extra 100 000 bicycles. Great for business and the buyer would be happy who sealed the deal, but we had to build them. 100 000 would equate to roughly an extra 250 containers that would need to be received. 100 000 boxes all weighing about 18 kg's each and all needing to be off loaded and stored in a pokey warehouse. A bicycle box was similar in size to a television box which are not small either. Building them wasn't a problem as we had 3 lines and one bike would come off the line every 45 seconds and should be able to achieve 240 bikes an hour once running at full capacity.

I got the call from the trucking company on the Wednesday that the containers were coming and just said "bring it on". We weren't ready as we were already nearly full but what choice did we have. It was a nightmare as once we started off loading one container truck at a time the queue grew and snaked around the block. Not a normal block mind you, but we are talking a few kilometres of trucks all waiting for us to off load.The plan was to take 30 minutes per truck and to have 4 trucks being off loaded at any one time. Do the maths on this one and you would be busy for over 60 hours non stop.

I had already worked out that this was a cluster f..k of note and had started making phone calls.It was 3 am when I woke up everyone who was responsible for the orders and congratulated them on a job well done and where were they to help. In my mind they always did half a job as getting the orders is easy but what about executing them making sure they are completed right onto the shelves in the store.

We never slept for over two days and nights and ran out of space on the first night. The car park became plan "B" with stock on pallets covered with trucking sails and tied down. In the end we had 2 car parks full of stock a warehouse jammed to the roof including the toilets and offices. By not thinking they had basically shut us down by flooding us with orders that were not realistic. The business couldn't function as it normally would and what was expected of the assembly teams was inhumane.

It was so bad over the next few weeks I reversed my car into the reception area and slept whenever I could. We had two shifts running night and day and managed to get the work done. I honestly don't know how it was achieved as the trucking bill to move the stock was insane. Half the stock had to move to another warehouse about 30 km away once they were assembled. 20 pallets with 10 per pallet is another 250 trucks of logistical work at that time of the year is not easy either.

I don't miss this work as saying it was tough is an understatement. The numbers were mind boggling and possibly why I got involved with packaging now. I understood the numbers and what was needed down to the last roll of sellotape. Having a brain for figures helped as it made it easier to break things down knowing how to stay on track. Everything was in my head as having an office was not an option, this was all hands on.