The fascinatingly efficient human-machine collaboration in packing station loading
I only use the yellow Packstation very rarely, but because I recently canceled the shipping flat rate of the dominant online retail group with linked video streaming due to the introduction of advertising there, I am ordering more from pick-up stations again. Because even without the shipping flat rate, you can order a lot of things without shipping costs if you have them delivered to one of the provider’s own pickup stations mentioned. And as it turns out, this also applies to all sorts of other pick-up points in the area, which is convenient for me, as there is one locker that you can still open without the provider’s app with a simple numerical code received by email Out of service.
So now I’m standing at the yellow packing station to pick up a package and I’m fascinated as I watch the delivery person distribute a hand truck full of packages to the compartments. The workflow for this works as follows: The station has one door open for each compartment size. The assembler now takes the next package and holds it in front of the barcode scanner on the control unit until it emits an acknowledgment tone. After a quick look at the screen, he places the package in the smallest compartment that still fits and closes the door. Another compartment of this size immediately pops open and it’s time for the next package. This is done so quickly that the entire hand truck with its approximately 15 packages of various sizes can be put away in just a few minutes. The trick with the several open compartments of different sizes is actually obvious, but it gives me great pleasure because someone has clearly thought carefully about how this human-machine collaboration can be designed in such a way that it is as quick, error-free and as possible is not very annoying. If that were the case everywhere, that’s what I think to myself and Kraftwerk’s man-machine plays in my head, which is even more fantastic with good headphones, anyway.
I briefly think that it’s my turn, but of course I still have to clear out the packages that have been delivered to the station. It works very similarly: A compartment pops open and the delivery person briefly beeps the removed package on the scanner of the control unit before it is placed on the hand truck. Here, too, I have to wait a long time before I hold the pickup barcode from the app in front of the scanner, which works straight away here – unlike at the terminals of one of the large fast food chains.
PS I’m so tired of advertising and the industry behind it that I buy my way out of advertising almost everywhere I can. This would also be possible for an additional three euros per month with the aforementioned video streaming service with a coupled shipping cost flat rate, but I have been carrying around the uneasy certainty for a long time that this store should be avoided for several good reasons, and video streaming is in our family Hardly used anymore anyway because of the rather mixed program.
(Gregor Meyer)