Scene: This is how mail-order motorcycle sales work

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Scene: This is how mail-order motorcycle sales work
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Scene: This is how mail-order motorcycle sales work

Scene: This is how mail-order motorcycle sales work
Mail from Doreen…

In addition to the classic branch business, mail order at Polo accounts for a large part of sales. MOTORRAD had the logistics explained to them in the new central warehouse in Juchen. And at the end Doreen packs up.

Michael Schumann

10/22/2009

“Hello, Polo Express Shipping, my name is” … for example Marion van Houten. The telephone lady with the lively voice gets to know who chooses the telephone order hotline of the motorcycle accessories multinational in Juchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. While the technical and service numbers are not manned at night and on Sundays, the order hotline does not know shop closing times or weekends and is always available around the clock. If Marion van Houten or one of her seven colleagues at the Polo headquarters is talking or is having a well-deserved evening, the callers are automatically forwarded to an external call center in Munster. “There are also permanently employed professionals on the phone who are familiar with our products and know that, for example, a super athlete normally does not have heated grips, says Eckard Isphording, who is responsible for shipping polo has been in charge for eleven years. If you call and order, you are asked to give your name and address as well as your date of birth. The data entered by the operator into the computer is then checked automatically and within seconds via a system query whether irregularities have occurred in previous orders and whether the last query was more than a year ago. In the event of abnormalities, the Schufa for Polo is active: The “Protection community for general loan protection” checks whether there is currently a collection process against the customer and whether the address and name match. “Such a procedure or a similar one is common at all mail order companies and companies. The name Schufa sounds a bit daunting to many, for us the Schufa is a service provider who tells us, firstly: yes, the person exists, and secondly: yes, they are also able to place their order for, for example, 500 euros Pay, explains shipping manager Isphording. “That does not mean that we can find out who has how much in the account.” Schufa has stored current data from around 65 million Germans. According to Isphording, Schufa gives the green light to 99 percent of all Polo customers. “This enables us to grant customers a larger credit line if they want to place a larger order on account, for example.”

The order has been taken, recorded in the computer and positively checked by the Schufa: everything is okay. The items ordered – Polo has around 33,000 in stock at all times – can be sent. Theoretically. Because before something leaves the huge central warehouse in Juche, it must first be put in, i.e. stored. It works like this: Every day from seven in the morning, goods are delivered to the nine truck unloading ramps, pre-sorted by hand – helmets, for example by size and color – and then recorded by team leader Michael Kujawski and his colleagues and scanned using a hand scanner. The scanner transmits the data to the central IT system via an infrared radio link. The computer knows exactly where there is space in the huge, 43,000-square-meter warehouse with its eight-meter-high, four-story metal shelves consisting of 96 sections. “And exactly where there is space, the goods go,” explains Michael Kujawski. So not handlebar to handlebar or pannier to pannier. “Chaotic warehousing” this system is called. Sounds messy, but it is currently the most modern because it is the fastest and most effective. And the EDP and the scanners are always in the know.

But the article is not on the shelf yet. For that, Michael Kujawski and colleagues have to do that “Driving order” create and the so-called “Box”, a kind of plastic box with the goods in it, with the transport order “marry”. The rest is done by a colleague computer, who then transports the box to one of three picking modules with the selected storage location using a complex system of fully automatically controlled rolling lanes and elevators, which run through the entire warehouse over a total of five kilometers. At the module, which can be imagined as a kind of taxiway stop between the shelf gorges, the delivered item is finally sorted into the appropriate shelf by one of the 70 (at peak times up to 100) warehouse employees. The computer then uses a scanner to find out that the goods have arrived at their intended location. It stays there until someone orders it. Which brings us back to shipping manager Eckhard Isphording. In the meantime, he has checked the Schufa checks of freshly received orders, including those via the Internet, which account for around two thirds of all private customer orders, and ticked them on the screen. From his desk he starts the fully automatic delivery creation in the form of a dispatch run through the central warehouse to the dispatch station with a click of the mouse. The dispatch run basically works in the same way as the previous storage of the article, only in reverse order: One out of 5000 boxes is started empty and runs on the computer-controlled taxiway to the respective section in which the goods are stored. There an employee learns from his hand scanner what exactly should be in and where the goods are, picks them up, puts them in the box and “married” the shipping order with the box. This then runs again fully automatically to one of the two shipping stations with their 60 packing stations each.

Finally, Doreen Ott or one of her colleagues is at the packaging station. If the light above the box that has just arrived is green, this means that the order is complete, including all of the goods ordered by the customer. If red, that means: wait for more boxes. All articles are scanned again to see whether they are really the right ones. Only when that is certain can Doreen pack up, print out the invoice with the return slip, enclose it with the address label on it – and away with the box. Namely via Rollstrabe to Johann Maciollek, who expertly closes and tapes it. Almost finished. But before the ordered goods can be picked up by DHL in the afternoon by truck, one last, important step is necessary: ​​every box intended for end customers has to go through the deactivator. Because every Polo item, from LED indicators to leather suits, is equipped with an anti-theft device. “A customer doesn’t even notice”, explains Michael Kujawski. “On a jacket, for example, this is a small silver thread that can be sewn into the lining somewhere.” If the security is not disarmed, the person wearing the jacket would trigger an alarm the next time he enters or leaves a polo shop – and would then no longer want any more mail from Doreen. And that’s not how mail order works.

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