Although William's visit to China did not have any official Beijing, the attention of the public was no less than that of a foreign leader's state visit.

The next day, Li Mu took William to visit Taobao, as well as Taobao Logistics' warehousing center and logistics distribution center in Yanjing.

Although William was shocked, it was Taobao's warehousing center and logistics distribution center.

Brother Liu has devoted all his energy to the optimization and improvement of the logistics system during this time, and now, Taobao Logistics' fleet size, belly warehouse resources and automatic sorting systems across the country are all in a period of rapid growth.

Coupled with the rapid development of Taobao's business, there are more and more domestic online shopping users, so the entire Taobao logistics has a huge order volume, of which one-third is Taobao's self-operated or Taobao warehousing delivery, and the remaining two-thirds are C2C sellers.

The huge amount of order support has given strong support to the development of the entire Taobao logistics, so Brother Liu's warehousing center has been continuously expanded, and the distribution center has also been expanded.

When William came to the sorting center of Yanjing Distribution Center, he was completely stunned by the modern logistics scene in front of him.

A large number of parcels are unpacked, sorted and repacked here, and then with the help of the logistics management system developed by Makino Technology for Taobao Logistics, each included status is recorded and updated in real time.

William watched countless packages shuttling quickly on the belt conveyor, and said to Li Mu in amazement: "I feel as if I have arrived more than ten years later, and I always feel that such an advanced and efficient logistics method is not a product of the current era at all......"

Li Mu smiled: " Most of the equipment you see is produced in Germany, this set of equipment in Germany has been available before 2000, in fact, it is not a very great thing, the reason why it has not been promoted very quickly in the world, the main reason is that the vast majority of countries, the current demand for small logistics capacity is not so large, and the requirements for efficiency are not so high, the reason why we want to use such equipment, and to develop automation to the extreme, the most critical reason is that we have too much demand for small logistics capacity, The efficiency requirements are too high, so big that they are larger than any other country in the world. ”

Li Mu's words are not unbelievable, Taobao logistics now carries the daily online shopping transportation of tens of millions of online shopping users in China, and the order volume is basically close to the state of Taobao in 2008-2010, this data is very terrible, it means that the speed of demand growth has been advanced by five or six years, which forces the way to solve the demand can also be five or six years in advance.

In terms of the current global e-commerce retail market, no country can compare with the current Taobao, except for Huaxia, the largest online retail market is the United States, but the order volume is less than a quarter of Huaxia.

Moreover, there is a very strange thing about e-commerce in the United States, that is, whether it is a platform, a seller or a buyer, the requirements for logistics efficiency are very Buddhist.

Even after more than ten years, the logistics efficiency of Huaxia e-commerce is far ahead of the world, and logistics companies like Shunfeng have been able to achieve 24-hour delivery between the vast majority of cities in the country, this efficiency is unimaginable if it is placed in the United States, and Europeans are even more incomprehensible.

Sure enough, William didn't understand Li Mu's explanation, and asked: "Mr. Li, is the efficiency of this kind of small logistics so important? Huaxia is so big, I think there is no big difference between two-day delivery and four-day delivery, but in order to achieve two-day delivery, it is necessary to invest a lot of money and manpower and material resources, which will cause a great waste of resources, right?"

Li Mu said with a smile: "Huaxia is a country with rapid development, do you know what a country with rapid development is most afraid of wasting?"

William tentatively asked, "Resources, money, or labor?"

"Neither. Li Mu shook his head and said with a smile: "It's time." ”

After that, Li Mu said again: "You see, Japan, Germany, France has its own high-speed railway technology, the speed of ordinary trains is about 100 kilometers per hour, but high-speed railways can reach more than 200 or even 300 kilometers per hour, when the train runs to more than 200 kilometers, air resistance will additionally increase huge energy consumption, for example, the same 500 kilometers of distance, ordinary railways take five hours, but the energy consumption is only one-third of high-speed railways, but high-speed railways only need one hour and forty minutes, energy consumption is three times that of ordinary railways, however, I believe that the latter is obviously more suitable for the future of China, because we want to rush time。 ”

William nodded as if he didn't understand, but in fact, he couldn't understand Li Mu's extreme pursuit of efficiency.

The pace of life of Europeans is far less fast than that of Huaxia Yanjing, and Europe's requirements for the rhythm of many infrastructure or services are far from being as perverted as Li Mu.

Li Mu said to William: "William, do you know why the United States created the Internet, but only China can compete with them, while Europe, which is also economically developed, as well as Japan and South Korea, have failed to make achievements on the Internet stage?"

William shook his head lightly: "To be honest, Mr. Li, I don't know much about the Internet, so I can't quite understand what you said." ”

Li Mu said with a smile: "It doesn't matter, let me tell you, in the past two hundred years of modern times, the Chinese people have been accustomed to catching up in doing things because of the backwardness of the country, and the Western countries have spent hundreds of years to pave the way for the industrial revolution, and China has only taken a few decades, although the overall process of modernization is still far behind the West, but we have used forty or fifty years to catch up with the gap of more than a hundred years in the West, and this gap is still narrowing, which is precisely thanks to our national characteristics of 'catching up'. ”

Speaking of this, Li Mu sighed: " You look at our Internet, it only started at the end of the last century, but together we are a hundred flowers, we have a large number of young people who have been to the West choose to return to China to start a business, and draw inferences from the business model created in the West, take myself as an example, if I do not have an extreme pursuit of efficiency, then Makino Technology may only have one YY now, and it is being pressed by Microsoft's MSN, Taobao may also be attacked by Amazon and eBay, so we must think about changes, and quickly find a breakthrough to rush and fight, which is why we can enter the international stage of the Internet industry after the United States。 ”

In the last life, only China was the only country that really followed the United States to grasp the rising tide of the Internet.

All of Europe, Japan and South Korea have missed the huge opportunity of the rise of the Internet, partly because of their obedience and acceptance of the American Internet market, and partly because of their own neglect of efficiency.

And the first generation of Internet people in China is indeed very remarkable, they from the first day of contact with the Internet, as if they were beaten with chicken blood, desperately start a business, with a few years, they have completed the road that other countries have taken more than ten years to complete, even if there is no Li Mu, Huaxia Internet will still emerge a large number of cattle, a large number of novel product models, a large number of large companies listed in the United States and Hong Kong.

Just like the Huaxia high-speed railway, from the completion of the first high-speed railway to the total mileage of the high-speed rail surpassing the sum of other countries in the world, the time shared by Huaxia has not yet been ten years, which is the pinnacle of the nation's 'catch-up' skills.

Subsequently, Li Mu took William to visit the storage center next to the distribution center, and the huge storage center once again gave William a strong shock.

Nowadays, Taobao warehousing can only be informationized, not automated, but even so, the combined shelves with a ceiling height of more than ten meters and seven or eight layers still make William stunned.

The operation mode adopted by Taobao warehousing at this stage is the warehousing software with modular shelf management.

For example, a single warehouse has a total of 20 shelves from A to T, each shelf is divided into 8 layers vertically and 20 grids horizontally, each grid has the same volume and size, and each grid stores products of the same type or brand.

In this way, the goods have clear coordinate information in the shelf, for example, edible oil is in A515, A represents row A shelf, 5 represents five layers, and 15 represents the 15th grid.

The information of A515 is recorded in the warehousing software, when there is edible oil warehousing, the system will instruct the warehousing staff to put the product into A515, and when there is an order for edible oil to be out of the warehouse, the system will also instruct the warehousing staff to A515 to pick up the goods.

If it is a fully automated warehousing, the goods are stored to A515, or picked up from A515, can be automated, but at this stage, there is no automation equipment in the world that can fully meet the needs of Taobao logistics, and Germany is also in the trial production stage, so the current warehousing and warehousing are still semi-automated.

The so-called semi-automation, is every two shelves in the middle of a track, one in front of the other with two lifts, such as a A and B row shelves in a track, each end of each has a lift, one is responsible for 1-10 grids, the other is responsible for 11-20 grids, each lift can achieve from one floor to eight floors of lifting.

The elevator is manually controlled, when the A515 picks up the goods, the driver of the second elevator at the rear end directly enters the position of the A515, and the elevator will rise to the height of the fifth floor and come to the front of the 15 grids, and after precise positioning, the pickup is completed by the manual.

But even if it's not fully automated, it's surprisingly efficient, with a large number of lifts running up and down the tracks to remove all kinds of goods and transport them to conveyor belts at both ends of the shelves, where they can be packed and sorted by other workers, much more efficiently than manual labor.

William stood under the huge lift, watched the operator keep busy, and exclaimed: "The scene in front of me is like watching a science fiction movie, it's incredible......"

Li Mu smiled: "Believe me, if you come back in two years, the changes here will be even more beyond your imagination!"