After Dave Clark was named the global logistics chief at Amazon.com, he held a conference where he confessed of having been in the shadows at warehouses looking for the lazy people to lay off. He is viewed as an individual who wouldn’t let a thing hinder customer satisfaction at any cost. His strictness was evident when he sent home a team after delivery performance drastically dropped. The 2013 holiday will forever ring in Clark’s mind; the unexpected foul weather and logistics challenges made the business environment so harsh hence failed deliveries leading to the company refunding the rattled customers to soothe them. Since then, Clark has been on his heels to ensure Amazon improves their delivery network.
The move for Amazon to have their delivery channels is aimed at eliminating over-reliance on third-party delivery companies and cut off the dominance by UPS and FedEx. Though the CEO, Jeff Bezos, has expectations to be met, Clark heavily relies on workers who work tirelessly to achieve the expectations as far as delivery is concerned. Though Amazon claims that its top priority is the safety of workers, there have been unprecedented incidences leading to deaths and injuries of workers. Since there has been an increment in levels of competition from Walmart Inc. and Target Corp., Amazon committed to delivering millions of products daily. Marc Wulfraat, co-founder MWPVL International, however, claimed that Amazon's rate of growth is detrimental since it would overwhelm their delivery capacity.
Clark has risen through the ranks at Amazon since he got his first position back in 1999. He is known to be a very demanding individual, and anyone would sweat when questioned by him, according to Neil Ackerman, a former executive at Amazon. Clark is known to be mindful of workers’ safety, evident from, the Pennsylvania incident where he came out and supported the use of $50 million to fund the installation of air conditioning in the warehouses.
Clark is also a risk-taker as he actively went for investing in robots making Kiva Systems help smoothen the business operations. Amazon has over 200,000 robots that also came with challenges ranging from loss of jobs to some even breaking some hazardous cans leading to hospitalization of staff. Amazon has had an appetite that hasn’t been easy to satisfy as they also hire very many staff members in addition to the robots to help the deliveries. Clark has always been on the front line of protecting the company’s image by accepting their faults and promising to work on the same.
Air cargo operation was also introduced in 2016 to help improve the turnaround time for deliveries. However, a crash that claimed several lives was blamed on Amazon’s tendency of overworking workers and therefore they were sued. Despite all shortcomings in the processes, Clark remains optimistic about a better future. He is trusted by Amazon to deliver the company to greater heights if they manage to improve a few aspects of the last-mile delivery.
