First tranche of volunteers arrived today, great boost. We prepared and dispatched fewer meals today, but in accordance with our target as we had lots of training with our volunteers. And it was still 165 people who don’t have to worry about shopping and cooking tonight. We also made a few teaks to our systems in order to improve efficiency, so all good valid activity in order to prepare the depot for higher volume. Discovered many more unseen aspects of productions lines; preparation, cleaning, recycling… all important stuff and incredibly time consuming. Was introduced to a new box size today, for a new production line; 5 day ‘self-isolation’ packs; it’s not just those in the workplace we are supporting, it’s as many as we can get to. Again, rewarding to see the tangible outcomes of our labour. Low-light: once again PR and media. I was interviewed for a piece on BBC Breakfast in the morning, along with a couple of others; fingers crossed I find myself on the cutting room floor.
With my newly found logistics understanding(!?!) I spoke to Tim tonight – he manages an Amazon Warehouse. We are in a different league though, he is routinely doing 1,000,000 items a shift, we are on 200 at the moment. However, we have a good chat and I hope to be better placed tomorrow to offer improvements to the team.
Though there is a fair bit of hanging around as we review and revise our processes, it is still quite a tiring day; I guess I’m just not used to manual labour…