[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by nfs6600

Well we've been told we won't even be allowed to smoke in the car park at work as it's still classed as the workplace Ok then, I guess the only other option of stand in front of the building off the property smoking and make the place look untidy.

That would never work at our place - first there are security cameras watching the yard and car park, and second there's a cabin for the security guards at the front gate. Even the delivery van drivers won't be allowed to smoke during working hours, and if they think their transport department managers aren't going to check, they're living in cloud cuckoo land.

A notice about the ban has gone up at our place, so they can't say they haven't been told. But there's another aspect of the ban which, quite frankly, I don't think the smokers at our place have thought of: namely, that since employees will not now be taking smoke breaks - supposedly - the managers will expect an increase in throughput.

I haven't the faintest idea of how much of an increase our lot will be expecting, but you can bet if they don't get some increase they'll damn well want to know why. And they will be able to tell, because our stock control system is entirely computerised. It goes like this:

As stock is unloaded from the trailers, the address barcode on each piece is scanned so as to add it to the stock, and in the process is given a unique reference label - as far as the database is concerned, this is the primary key, the address barcode being the secondary or foreign key. The reference label is considered to have a finite lifetime, which is from the moment it's received into stock to the moment it's delivered and the customer accepts delivery. But the entity relationship between item and customer is one-to-many, not one-to-one, because items can be reallocated.

A customer might cancel an order before it's delivered, or change their mind when it's delivered, in which case the driver has to bring it back. In either event, what are you supposed to do with it? Send it back to the supplier? No, that's not cost-effective; instead, reallocate it to another customer. If the relationship were one-to-one, there'd be no provision for cancellations, and eventually the warehouse would be full of cancelled and returned stock...although the place would most likely have gone bankrupt long before that point was reached.

Thus one item might have several customers before it's finally delivered (in practice, though, reallocation usually occurs a maximum of 3 times), but only one customer will eventually accept it upon delivery. At that point the reference label effectively ceases to exist; the customer order to which it refers will be retained on the database for a certain length of time (I don't know how long), and eventually deleted.

When stock is being put away on the various floors, the reference label and a location barcode are scanned, so as to register each item as being in a particular location.

At some point, stock items must be retrieved from wherever they've been put away, i.e. picked, so they can be loaded onto a given van. In the process, the address barcode and the reference label are both scanned to ensure each customer gets the correct item; it's no use sending a blue suite if they've ordered a cream one, for example, or a 3' bed if they want a 5' bed.

Finally, when the items are loaded onto the vans, each reference label is scanned by the loading team as a final check that a) every item for that van has been picked, b) it's present on the loading bay and c) it's the correct item - if you've got newbies doing the picking, they might have picked the wrong piece. It happens. Or the piece might have been labelled incorrectly by the receiving staff; that happens, too...far too frequently.

The upshot of all this is that the database is updated in real time every time a reference label is scanned. Every hour, a report is printed which shows - to the item - exactly how much new stock has been received in, how much has been picked for loading onto the 7.5 ton delivery vans, how much put away, how much loaded on the vans etc...in other words, how much work has been done.

The management know perfectly well that a certain percentage of the workforce slope off at intervals to have a quick fag. Therefore, since they won't be doing that any more (allegedly), they'll be at their place of work for longer each day. Therefore, the stock reports should show that more work is being done - especially now they have, FINALLY, seen sense and reinstated the night shift, as a result of which the place is now operating 24/5, plus part-day weekends.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. I for one can't wait.

Right. Off to bed.