Unicor Logistics / Part one

I mentioned a little while ago that I had taken a job at Unicor. Well, here's a little Unicor, Mayor Mark trivia for you.

One of the problems we have here is the Logistics of contractual product, ie: materials needed to provide the required product numbers of canning jar trays our client requires. For the record each TRAY of jars we produce consists of 12 jars, 12 lids and twelve bands. Let me put this into perspective.

Five thousand TRAYS is our, my, expected daily output; customer requires four to four and a half thousand a day. The discrepancy between my number and their number is this: we are in prison and are subject to all kinds of unexpected interruptions in the amount of hours we are able to work, which of course has a direct affect on our daily output. What I mean by this is, there are all kinds of things that can happen which CAN prevent us from being able to work. For instance; if Staff has a meeting, or a barbeque, or a Staff appreciation day - we do not work. If it snows-in the roads, Staff is late, or short-staffed and we are delayed. If there is too much fog outside we are delayed until it clears. If there is an incident of violence we are locked down, often for days on end and we do not work. AND, heaven forbid if the doughnut truck has a flat tire, then the whole prison is shut down, LOL, I'm just kidding, poking fun at Government Workers (get 'em Elon!). So, in order to average four thousand Trays a day, we, at Unicor, have to be prepared for delays - hence, if we are to meet the sixty to seventy thousand a month Tray number our client expects we try to get ahead by doing more on a daily basis.

Now 5000 trays a day means we use 60,000 jars, 60,000 lids and 60,000 bands , not to mention the Trays/boxes themselves, or the pallets they are stacked on or the plastic wrap that accompanies every tray. Lets put this into perspective. At a minimum of 60,000 trays a month we run a million pieces of material a month through our shop. A MILLION! So you can see this is a massive amount of material required; a complex shipping and receiving ordeal. This of course is handled by the main warehouse, which is run by the Campers (minimum security inmates) outside these fences a half mile or so from here.

When our client, Tecnocap, gives us a work-order, we here at the FCI order the material needed to fill the order. It is then trucked in to us on an almost daily basis. This material arrives at the outside warehouse, it is inventoried, stored and then parceled to us, by eighteen wheelers, on a daily basis. This is our Logistics, in a nutshell.

When I mentioned that things can and do happen to prevent us from fulfilling our 5000 tray daily quota I left out one important thing, something, by the way, which I was peripherally exposed to twenty years ago at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence Colorado.

Imagine this. Something that happened decades ago is now affecting my Unicor job in 2025.

What you ask?

Well, that is another story which demands its own explanation, something you'll have to wait until next week to hear. Trust me, it is a hell of a story about friends and enemies, violence and murder topped off with, well, a prison escape. Yes, you'll want to hear it.

Part two, coming next week!

Peace be with you, Mayor Mark

 

Bruceton Mills, 3/15/2025