Workplace reviews and discussion: 曜磊全球股份有限公司

You don't have to take out the garbage yourself

This company only recruits warehouse staff and production control supervisors. The cushy positions in other departments are all firmly occupied because they can dump their work on other people and are very good at flattering those in power, so they rarely recruit anyone.

Let's talk about the situation in a certain warehouse.

The introduction of a new system originally presented an opportunity to fix the chaos throughout the warehouse, but a senior executive who thought they were highly capable and clearly believed that everyone else didn't use their brains managed to botch it.

The warehouse-category planning is problematic. They seem to think they're Hon Hai or TSMC and have a huge number of warehouses.

The storage-location planning is also problematic. If you have several pallets of different items placed together and count them as the same storage location, are you sure you'll be able to find things easily?

The material classification is problematic too. They seem to think they're Hon Hai or TSMC, with a huge number of materials, and imagine that the company has production lines operating simultaneously, so they divide everything into several categories out of fear that someone might take the wrong item. Has it occurred to you that you only need to prepare materials for those two processing plants and ship them to customers?

On top of that, Purchasing usually dumps the task of keying purchase-receipt orders into the system on the warehouse. Then you'll discover that you have to select the correct warehouse category and product category. One item is manageable, but when you have a pile of items to create orders for every day, poor planning turns the work into a waste of time.

These things may have been left unchanged during the system migration because someone was afraid to ask other departments to change their processes in order to curry favor with them. Or perhaps they simply lacked the ability to know what needed changing. The reason isn't clear, but that was the result after this person finished discussing it: the procedures are cumbersome and inefficient.

The PDA operation introduced along with it also had problems, resulting in the company having to keep spending money to modify the system and interfaces.

There was also a problem with transferring documents out of the system after scanning with the PDA. Someone bought the equipment without even trying the PDA operation first. After buying it, they still had no idea what the actual operating process looked like or how the results would be presented, yet they started berating people and saying that others had comprehension problems. They had no idea that the people below were all figuring out ways to keep things running smoothly and clean up the mess created by someone else.

As for why people get berated, let me also discuss how one supervisor treats people.

When nothing is happening, everything is phrased as an order for you to carry out. When a problem occurs, you get yelled at; from then on, whenever any problem arises, they immediately suspect you in front of everyone without checking the facts. If everyone happens to be having a bad day and problems occur all at once, they dump the work on the two long-serving veterans below them, saying things like they need to provide training or teach them. These two are the only people they don't dare touch, because if they were pushed out, the warehouse couldn't keep operating—people keep resigning and there is no one to hand things over to.

And if a certain supervisor starts having a problem with you, you may encounter the following:

They look for excuses to reject your overtime request and won't let you report overtime.

Then, if you don't work overtime, they say you never help anyone else. They're putting on a show either way.

When an opportunity arises, they even incite other people, making them resent you too.

Then, for matters that should follow the normal procedure, they deliberately make you go ask the two veterans. You can only proceed after the two veterans confirm it, wasting your time.

Back to the warehouse.

The warehouse material-preparation process is also problematic. Don't expect this to change either.

Everything is prepared in exactly the required quantity, with no buffer at all. Even zip-top bags used for things like soy sauce are counted individually for picking. There is absolutely no concept of labor cost: the time you spend preparing them, converted into an hourly wage, would be enough to buy a new bag of zip-top bags. ICs and small components also have to be counted individually; items rarely come out as full rolls or packs, and even then, the exact quantity is prepared.

Then, because the items aren't issued as full packs or rolls, you have to spend a lot of time counting the remaining quantity, right? But vendors often provide extras, so after counting, you may think you miscounted and have to count a second time. And if there is an excess, it cannot be kept as spare stock. One senior employee insists that all excess items be entered into the system as inventory, so you also have to create an order in the system.

If a mistake is made, you also have to write a report and come up with a new method to prevent it from happening again. Then everyone has to change how they work to follow your method. However, the content you write usually displeases a certain person, and in the end you only pass the first round after replacing it with that person's brilliant opinion.

In addition,

there are many miscellaneous tasks that the warehouse handles. When goods arrive, it also has to perform the checks that Quality Assurance should be doing. It has to key in orders for Purchasing and help enter invoice information, modify shipping orders that Sales entered incorrectly, print asset labels for General Affairs and help them attach them, and so on. Many things the warehouse should not be doing are assigned by a certain office-based senior executive to their subordinates. Once enough small tasks accumulate, they become a major burden and waste your working time. Then a certain supervisor uses this to curry favor with other departments. Since they are also usually flattering those in power and helping the boss, the boss thinks this person does an excellent job. But where exactly the boss's eyes are is another matter; I can't be bothered to say more.

The warehouse also has to deal with materials prepared because Sales carelessly accepted orders, put away and find storage locations for things Purchasing impulsively overbought, confirm with Purchasing how much merchandise to return, and other such nonsense.

All in all, fresh young workers with healthy livers are welcome to join.

The above content is purely fictional; any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.