Stealing Made Easy

Everyone loves IPods with the exception of the music industry. This new gadget is one more reason for industry executives to dislike them.

iHappy

Recently my wife gave me an Iphone for my 40th birthday. It was to replace my recently lost, dropped, dropped in a toilet and lost for good previous phone. My wife was taking a chance getting me this phone because I do not have a good track record with phones (or American Express cards).

This IPhone is the coolest gadget ever invented. I had resisted getting a Crackberry for many reasons, but an iphone is the Crackberry's cool cousin. I am not a slave to my Iphone like I would be a crackberry, I hardly use the mail to stay in touch with work. Thankfully my company does not support Iphones with mail so I can only access work mail through the web browser.

There are many great features that I love on the Iphone, but one of my favorite features is that I have found out how to stream Sirius through it. When I go for a walk or to the gym, I can listen to some of my favorite stations on Sirius (springsteen channel, howard Stern, sirius left, NFL network, etc). Also, through the same process, I can access music on my home PC or any other multimedia files on my home pc.

The phone features are extremely intuitive and easy to navigate. The keyboard is even easy for someone with fat fingers like myself. The safari browser is pretty good. you can view webpages and zoom in with the touch screen.

I'm sure the Iphone apps on the way are only going to get better. There is already and AIM app so you can instant message from your phone to AOL accounts.

I should in the interest of full disclosure admit to dropping the phone and had the touch screen stop working. I brought it to Apple and they replaced it. Unfortunately, cool technology in my hands of stone is not a great combination.

Running Robots

I saw a video of some new technology installed in one of Staples' fulfillment centers. The technology was impressive. I've seen some amazing automation but this may be the most impressive.

I've included a recent article excerpt on the techology, click the link for the full article.

Staples’ robotic retrievers offer new take on break-pack picking
By Corinne Kator, Associate Editor -- 7/1/2007

Each picking. Piece picking. Split-case picking. Whatever they call it, most companies find picking and shipping individual items hard to do cost effectively.

Staples—the world’s largest office products company—is no exception. There, picking individual items to fill online and catalog orders is known as break-pack picking. And, according to Roger Will, vice president of transportation and logistics planning and engineering, it’s a challenge.

“The break-pack pick module is the pinch-point in throughput in our DCs,” he says.

Staples uses pick-to-light systems in a few of its break-pack operations, but most of the company’s facilities, including the one in its 500,000 square foot Chambersburg, Pa., facility, are conventional pick-and-pass operations:

paper lists direct picking in the facilities’ pick modules, and
conveyor lines carry away finished orders for shipping.
The Chambersburg facility is one of the best in the Staples network, says Will, but when it was time to expand the break-pack picking operation there last fall, Staples decided not to add more pick modules and conveyor.

Instead, the company installed a radically different fulfillment system in which robots bring inventory to order pickers.