Yes, this is our very first COVID-19 Fuzzy Friday. We’ve stayed away from the subject for a long time because there are way too many articles and posts about the topic.
Therefore, this isn’t going to be your typical Fuzzy Friday article about some exciting new technology or some super-duper distribution centre we managed to bring to life. This one is going to be more personal, not just for me but for most of our team.
Everyone who knows me knows that I am originally Dutch. We moved here in 2008 to start working at Swisslog after having helped the local office a few times when they were implementing the automated warehouses for Coca Cola Amatil.
In the early years we used to travel back to The Netherlands at least once a year to visit friends and family. Over time that’s been reduced to once every one and a half years simply because technology like WhatsApp, Zoom, Teams and Skype (yes my parents still use Skype) has allowed us to keep connected with our friends and family more easy. We all now use that same technology to work remotely during this pandemic, except maybe Skype…
So why this COVID-19 article then?
Yesterday was my parents 50th wedding anniversary and we couldn’t fly to The Netherlands to celebrate this with them. My brother, his wife and kids and my aunts and uncles helped decorate their house and all we could do was send the biggest bouquet of flowers we could find. And we skyped of course ?.
This is all due to COVID-19 putting travel restrictions on everyone. We can’t fly to The Netherlands and they can’t fly here. And the problem is that it doesn’t just affect me. Most of our team didn’t originally grow up in Australia. Matt is another fellow Dutchman, Jeffrey is originally from Chile, Yohan is Sri Lankan, Chris is from Colombia and Mak, our intern, originates from India.
Every single one of them has family overseas and none of them can travel to see them.
Chris wanted to go back to Columbia to see his family over Christmas, just like Yohan intended to go see family in Sri Lanka. Mathijs wanted to go back to Europe with his Swedish girlfriend and Mak has been stuck here by himself with the closest family being his sister in Perth. Jeff’s brother lives in the USA and my story, well I just explained my skype situation above.
I love our team, I really do. I think we’ve built an extraordinary group of likeminded “Fuzzies”, but I also know that the current situation isn’t easy on them.
Over the course of the past months we’ve seen everyone slowly getting used to the situation we’re all in. But we’ve also noticed that everyone struggles with not being able to go out, visit friends, visit family and just getting on with life.
We want to make sure everyone’s mental health is looked after. So, this article is meant as an open invitation to anyone who struggles with the current situation. If you need someone to talk to, if you want to catch up digitally or even if you just want to have a virtual drink, we are here for you.
You can call any one of us for moral support. Please join our virtual pub every Friday, the link is published every Friday on our LinkedIn page. If you have an idea on what else we can/should do to help each other out, please reach out to us.
We are all in this together!
Bas Schilders is the principal consultant at Fuzzy LogX who are the leading warehouse, logistics, and process improvement consultants in Australia. With a career spanning 2 continents and 20 years in warehouse improvements and solution implementations, Bas is one of the most experienced consultants in the country when it comes to logistics improvements and implementing warehouse automation solutions.