世界500強CEO訪談 第65期:聯(lián)邦快遞弗雷德里克史密斯 世界將會改變(1)

Reporter: Where and when did you get the idea for Federal Express?

記者：您是在何時何地有了創(chuàng)辦聯(lián)邦快遞的想法的呢?

Smith: The original idea came in two parts. The first part was when... I was a student at Yale and I was writing a paper about the computerized society that was on the horizon. It was pretty clear then, with IBM installing the big computers around, that the world was going to change. And the paper was about how this was going to change a lot of things, and in particular it was going to change the way things had to be distributed and moved to support those automated devices. Then I sort of let that lie. I didn’t get a particularly good grade on it, as I recall. I don’t think it was prescient, or brilliant in any respect. When I graduated from Yale in 1966，I went into the service, like a great percentage of my classmates at that time. The Vietnam War had begun in earnest, and I spent four and a half years in the Marine Corps. That’s when I sort of crystallized the idea for FedEx on the supply side, how to solve the problem that had been identified in that paper. In the military there’s a tremendous amountof waste. The supplies were sort of pushed forward, like you push food onto a table. And invariably, all of the supplies were in the wrong place for where they were needed. Observing that and trying to think about ways to have a different type of a distribution system is what crystallized the idea. The solution was, in my mind, to have an integrated air and ground system, which had never been done. And to operate not on a linear basis, where you try to take things from one point to another, but operate in a systemic manner. Sort of the way a bank clearing house does, you know? They have a bank clearing house in the middle of all the banks and everybody sends someone down there and they swap everything around. Well, that had been done in transportation before: the Indian post office， the French post office. American Airlines had tried a system like that shortly after World War II. But the demand side and supply side had really not met at an appropriate level of maturation. By the early ‘70s when I’d gotten out of the service it was very clear that this new society was coming in earnest. And so, at that point I said, “What the hell, let’s try to put it together.” And that’s how FedEx came to be. And then from that point forward, the requirements for this type of system were so profound and so big, really for the next 25 years to this date we’ve simply been running just to keep up with the requirements. And that’s what led to the hundreds of planes and the thousands of trucks. I wish it was something that I could say I was so smart. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last quarter century.

史密斯：我最初的想法可以分為兩部分。第一部分是當我還是一名耶魯大學的學生的時候，那時候我準備寫一篇有關于我們的社會即將成為一個計算機化的社會的論文。那時的形勢是，隨著 IBM在全世界范圍內安裝大型計算機， 我們生活的世界將會發(fā)生改變。我的論文是關于這將會如何使很多事物發(fā)生改變，尤其是這將會如何影響人們遞送物品的方式，以支持那些自動化設備的運轉。后來我就把這件事情擱置下了。我記得，當時我那篇論文并沒有取得一個好的分數(shù)。我認為，那篇論文無論從哪一方面來說都不是有先見之明或是突出的。在我1966年從耶魯大學畢業(yè)的時候，和那時我大多數(shù)的同學一樣，我開始服兵役。那時候越南戰(zhàn)爭爆發(fā)了，我在海軍陸戰(zhàn)隊待了4年半的時間。那個時候，我想要創(chuàng)辦聯(lián)邦快遞的想法才漸漸有了雛形，我才知道了應該如何解決我在那篇論文中所提出的問題。在軍隊里，浪費的現(xiàn)象很嚴重。供給問題被提了出來，就像把食物放到桌上一樣明顯。因為毫無例外，所有的供給都沒有被用到真正需要的地方?？吹竭@些，我便開始想怎樣才能有一種不同的分配體系，這樣我的想法開始具體化。我腦海中想到的解決方式就是，我們需要有一個完整的空中和陸地供應體系， 這在那之前是并不存在的。這個體系的運行不僅要能夠達到長度上的要求，即能夠將事物從一個地方運送到另一個地方，還要能夠以一種系統(tǒng)的方式運行。就像是銀行票據(jù)交換處的工作方式那樣。你知道在所有銀行所處地域的中間地帶，設置一個銀行票據(jù)交換處，然后每一個銀行都派一個工作人員去那里，進行票據(jù)交換。這以前在交通方面出現(xiàn)過，比如說，印度郵電局、法國郵電局。美國航空公司曾經(jīng)在二戰(zhàn)結束之后形成了一個體系。但是當時的需求方和供給方都沒有達到一定的成熟度。到上世紀70年代初期，我服完兵役之后，很明顯的就是一個新的社會正熱切地朝我們走來。然后那時，我說： "管他呢，讓我們把這些都組成一個整體吧! ”聯(lián)邦快遞就這樣誕生了。然后從那時起，人們對于我們這種服務體系的需求越來越多，在接下來的25年中直到現(xiàn)在，我們一直都只是在從事著滿足人們對于快遞服務的需求的工作。這也促使我們擁有了屬于自己的成百架飛機和成千輛卡車，我希望說自己在這方面做得還是很不錯的，這也是我們在過去的25年時間中一直在從事的工作。

Reporter: How would you describe your childhood?

記者：您怎樣看您的童年呢?

Smith: My childhood was autonomous, in the main. My father passed away when I was four. I had a lovely mother, but not having a father influence, I learned a lot of things on my own. I think that would be the best characterization of it.

史密斯：我的童年總體來說都是靠自己的。在我4歲的時候我父親就去世了。我有一位非?？蓯鄣哪赣H，但是由于從小沒有父親的幫助，很多事情都是我自學的。我想這就是對我童年的最好的描述。