Word: orderlies
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...volume Lenk envisioned. "There's nothing that's easy," Lenk says. "The details are really hard." Everything--the software, the shipping procedures, the wrapping system--had to be invented on the fly, including the ingenious idea of streamlining the warehouse process by having pickers, packers, loaders, replenishers and order processors all wear different-colored hats. Lenk discovered the hard way that e-businesses couldn't simply duplicate existing retail operations, such as catalog companies, online. "You can't take the mail-order model and plug and play here. For example, we need real-time inventory control. We need the website...
...Palm handheld computers. Here's the idea: simply scan the unique 12-digit bar code of each product in your kitchen as you use it, and a replacement is on its way. If you prefer to stay in the La-Z-Boy, munching on pizza, get your refrigerator to order the groceries. Electrolux and Frigidaire have already developed prototype smart fridges, which, we're promised, will automatically sense when your milk carton feels light or your cheese smells like unlaundered socks and will order more. In the wake of the smart fridge, food-industry experts are dreaming of a smart...
With the party set for Sunday night, the plan was to give myself a week to order, always starting online but resorting to 800 numbers in a pinch, find a middle ground between ordering the totally exotic (alligator meat) and the reliably prosaic (ham), and default to vendors in California when in doubt, figuring those geeks in Silicon Valley surely have figured out how to stuff a turkey through a modem...
...case of Merlot to ensure that my guests were less than keenly sensitive to the cellophane and cardboard from which their meal had so recently been liberated. I needed a way around the Rules. What if I could find a local store with a website but faxed the order? My seven years covering the Clintons were coming in handy. How do I get a case of wine to my doorstep by Saturday? Don't ask, don't tell...
...asked Margaret Carlson, who usually writes about politicians, to order up dinner on the Web and have a party. The second half of that proposition went well; the first part makes for quite a tale. And despite a lot of coaxing to order only exotic items, Margaret wanted a safety dish and clicked for a ham. Perhaps covering politicians all these years...