will work with food

For Jason Ackerman, the inefficient voice is a ringing phone.
This means that the customer of his online grocery store, the Fresh Direct customer, received the red pepper instead of the green, did not like the look of the salmon slices, or was angry because the order was late.
Every time one of his 50 customers
The service representative took him $3 to pick up the phone.
50, plus the cost of the wrong item.
As co-founder and chief financial officer of FreshDirect, Ackerman\'s job is to keep the phone silent ---
Since the $1 billion Webvan shutdown reported in 2001, critics have been laughing at the potential of the online grocery store.
FreshDirect has been catering to time-
Since the truck began wandering the streets of New York in 2002, it has been carefully selected.
FreshDirect now sells $0. 2 billion worth of food each year.
This year, it will ship 2 million orders for 60 million items to 8 million boxes. One-
The quarter of its 10,000 projects is customizable (
Choose the thickness, marinade and packaging of the steak).
The company assembled daily orders between 11 p. m. and 11 a. m.
Most trucks have to leave before 1 p. m.
\"You have to do it,\" says Akerman, a former food company --
Industry Investment Banker
\"There is no choice.
You can\'t do it tomorrow.
\"FreshDirect was funded in 1999 by Ackerman and his uncle Peter, who held a large stake through their fund Crown Capital Group.
Insurance giant AIG is also an investor, and several others, including Richard Braddock, chairman of FreshDirect, are investors. he is the president of Citibank and chief executive of Priceline. com.
The early days of the company was a struggle.
It took three years for the software and sorting system to make adequate adjustments, enabling the first trucks to roll.
But for the first time last year, FreshDirect (undisclosed)
Profit, it keeps cutting costs, as its chefs do with a piece of Parmesan cheese.
During the four years of opening, the Project Accuracy of FreshDirect has improved by three-
A tenth of a point to 999%.
Represents $1.
Savings for this year are 1 million.
FreshDirect is one of the few surviving online grocery stores
Com crashed together with Peapod, which is now a unit of the Royal Dutch grocery store, and SimonDelivers is in the Minni aparis area.
Last year, the online grocery market was priced at $3.
3 billion, a small percentage of US $615 billion in grocery sales, but according to Jupiter Research, it has grown by 27% this year, more than 2005.
The continued success of FreshDirect depends entirely on product quality and logistics capabilities.
\"The challenge is that 33 pieces appear in the factory at the same time in order to get on the bus,\" said Chief Information Officer Kelly McGowan . \".
He is still gushing about his old job on Wall Street, comparing food distribution to electronic transfers of stock and bond trading orders.
The immediate concern of freshness is that an item has been scanned very few times before arriving at the packing station.
There, the workers in the snow clothes (
The warehouse is partially refrigerated to 36 degrees)
Remove items from the conveyor belt, scan them and place them in the carton.
If the wrong item is sent to the Packers by mistake, the runner will swap it and block the order, possibly even the entire refrigerated truck.
Over the past few years, the company has invested in additional scanners so that items are scanned three times before they arrive in the box, thus providing additional places to capture errors.
The extra 50 cents spent on finding the error are well below $6 or so, which would cost more if the error slipped through.
\"We are trying to eliminate human error as much as possible,\" said Ariel Ramirez, operations manager . \".
Not having to arrange items like a store will bring direct benefits and the price is high
Eye level and low profit items
Commodity profits fell.
Instead, items on eight long shelves are arranged according to the frequency, weight and sophistication of the order.
At the beginning of the picking process, there will be a lot of tidal detergent, and at the end there will be fragile sliced bread.
The pickers remove the item from the shelf and put it into a nine
A box array that moves between picking rooms on the overhead track, such as a ski lift.
If the order has been completed, but their picking basket has to wait in line behind the incomplete order, the company will waste money.
The Picker now sends a 35% order through quicker, shortening the travel time of the case from 45 minutes to 30 minutes.
The software creates a pick list for items stored in farther
Out of the aisle and close to another-
Among the items that most pickers work on.
In the past, an order traveled an average of 1,000 feet kilometers in the warehouse, and now it has traveled 830 feet kilometers.
FreshDirect\'s 150 riders must compete in two games.
The company promises to give customers an hour window.
No maps and GPS in Manhattan
The bound driver must be aware of the complexity of service elevators, parking spaces and difficult building managers.
That\'s why new drivers deliver 35% fewer orders than experienced drivers.
During peak hours, FreshDirect limited the number of delivery slots it provided and kept the driver away from the crowded streets, instead sending a larger truck to push the trolley to the customer\'s apartment as a delivery person
The kitchen of FreshDirect\'s executive chef, Michael Stark, preparing to pack meals is also becoming more automated.
Stark spent two years translating his recipes into SAP factory software.
When lasagna orders come in, the system checks the inventory of the kitchen and orders meat, pasta, cheese and ketchup to send the meat to the deli for grinding.
More automated, the machine can bake pizza and make meatballs.
New Yorkers have begun to take a harsh approach to 1,000 roast chickens a week.
As the size of the company expands, the cost of pressing is as important as squeezing oranges.