Good friend Brian Sommer sent me this from a trip to Benelux he just came back from:
"Just outside Amsterdam's Schiphol airport is the FloraHolland flower auction house. It advertises itself as "the largest flower auction in the world". The facility in Aalsmeer is huge and heavily automated. From what I observed, approximately 48 containers, most of which hold 100 cut flowers each, are placed on a wheeled rack of about 4' X 4' X 8'. Large, almost endless trains of these racks are moved through 2 massive, automated auction rooms. Each auction room has 2 concurrent auctions underway. According to FloraHolland, this site and 5 sister locations auction off some 8+ million racks/trolleys worth of flowers annually. From what I observed, each trolley's contents are auctioned off every 3-5 seconds.
The degree of automation within this facility is impressive. Underground and
overhead moving systems are supplemented by a small army of people driving a
number of powered devices. Surprisingly, with all of the automation, people
and movement, it is actually a fairly quiet place. I expected to hear
trolleys colliding, people barking out requests, etc. but it was an amazing
exercise in highly controlled chaos.
Thousands of growers cut and ship flowers to this facility. Inbound trucks
are unloaded and flower trolleys are queued for auction. Post-auction, the
trolleys are moved to a picking area where individuals assemble on different
trolleys the items purchased by bidders. Picking is powered by bar code
technology and other methods. Once a buyer's orders are gathered, the
trolleys are staged for outbound shipping with many shipments destined to
move through Schiphol to flower markets globally. It is not only a great
tourist experience but a marvel of efficiency, technology and logistics.
Every warehouse distribution software vendor would be lucky to have
FloraHolland as a reference."
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