Warehousing Process for Transferring Stuff

At Step 1, Keith fills the warehouse with widgets that his company has manufactured. Later, at step 2, Conner goes to get a widget so that he can deliver it to a customer.

Now, in addition to putting things in the warehouse and getting them out again, other things have to happen. For instance

• Keith probably put the widgets in the right place in the warehouse so that others could know where to find them.

• Conner has access to the documentation that told him where to find Keith's widgets inside the warehouse.

• Without the ability to find the widgets and keep track of the inventory, the warehouse would soon be useless.

A file transfer application called File Transfer Protocol (FTP) works with the same general logic as the warehouse example. You can put things on the FTP server and get them off the FTP server, but you also need documentation as to where things are for FTP to be useful. Figure 8-10 shows the basic process.