I don’t do Prime but I do find it useful for buying things I don’t really care about that much (a cable tidy anyone?) and great for finding cheap second-hand books when I can’t find them in the Oxfam bookshop. Some people claim they receive a delivery of some sort from them most days: others feel they are the devil incarnate. There is no avoiding them. And I haven’t – I have been to get a glimpse from the inside at Amazon.
Together with small group from Coventry & Warwickshire CIPD I went on a tour of Amazon “Fulfilment centre” (not warehouse, not box, not depot) in Coventry. We had nearly two hours of guided tour and a full range of questions politely and honestly answered by our “Tour Ambassador”. (You can go too: see the link below*)
The FC in Coventry is around 400,00 square feet, some 6 soccer pitches, a small one by their standards. We saw parcels being unloaded by the truckload, conveyed, sorted, opened, redistributed, and sent out again. The volumes are breath-taking: I think from what I saw, their peak capacity could move around 15,000 parcels and hour. They work 20-hour days (2 x 10-hour shifts), 7 days a week. They currently recycle 70% of their packing, which leaves me thinking they have some way to go – like the rest of us. The associates (not employees, staff, workers etc.) looked content in their work. There is a huge restaurant, they have rules about working and security, and the whole place makes an effort to look after people. I liked the “ergomats” you stand on at workstations– they looked like steel checker plate but are soft for your feet. We saw, at a distance, some robots.
Is this the future of work? In some ways it could be said to be the past revisited – a modern day factory. But it will be a while before the 3 and a half thousand employees are superseded. Unless we all stop buying stuff. How many more cables tidys do I need?
https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/amazon-fulfilment/tour-an-amazon-fulfilment-centre/
Buzzwords of the Week –Equity
Definition – In balance sheet, the sum of your initial investment in the company (share capital) and any profit you have reinvested in subsequent years (retained profit). Also known as Shareholders’ Funds.
Alternate View – works the same as the equity if you own a house: value of the asset less liabilities. For a company, value of the assets less liabilities. In larger companies may include other accounting oddities like Capital reserves and share premium: don’t worry about those, they all count as apart of the bit of the company the shareholders own, and the lenders do not.