

Photos of Amazon.com fulfillment center - niqolas
http://www.doobybrain.com/2009/12/07/photos-of-amazon-com-fulfillment-center/

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cpach
Linkjacked. [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233766/Santas-
littl...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233766/Santas-little-
helper-Todays-busiest-online-shopping-day-year-So-ready-biggest-grotto-
Lapland.html)

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bigtrench
More photos of the same centre can be found here
[http://www.silicon.com/technology/networks/2009/12/23/photos...](http://www.silicon.com/technology/networks/2009/12/23/photos-
inside-amazon-at-christmas-39692316/)

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tjic
I own and run two smallish ( ~ $1 mill/yr ; ~ $0.5 mill/yr revenue) ecommerce
stores ( <http://smartflix.com> and <http://heavyink.com> ) and I bought a few
textbooks books on warehouse layout and design.

There really wasn't a lot in there that was applicable to me, but I bet that
(a) the Amazon folks have all read these books, and (b) they could write much,
much better ones if they wanted to spill some of their trade secrets!

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falsestprophet
Well done. How did you scale up smartflix? That seems like a very challenging
problem. Did you need to spend a great deal of money to create a useful
initial stock of DVDs ?

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tjic
Not all at once, but yes.

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Hates_
I would pay generously to take a guided tour of Amazon's fulfilment centre. I
imagine it to be a hive of activity. Most of us take next day delivery for
granted now, but when taking into account the volume Amazon must process every
day, I find it fascinating. Even more so when you take into consideration
their same day (evening delivery) service.

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mseebach
I'd guess that next-day or same-day delivery is simply a consequence of
efficient HR and not a goal in it self.

If fulfilment takes n minutes on average pr. order, they need n x number of
orders staff-time. Unless they execute the order immediately after its placed
(or at least all stocks are available), orders will pile up. The efficiency is
simply to match staff with order, and with a large volume of orders and a
large staff, that's quite simple to pull off. With rolling shifts, you can ask
one shift to stay on for 10-15 minutes and instantly have 10s of hours of
added capacity.

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potatolicious
I work for Amazon, this post is my own opinion, not of my employer, yadi yada.
I obviously can't say much, but I just have to say it _really_ is not as
simple as you're making it sound ;) It goes much, much, much further than just
having X people in a warehouse :P

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MrFoof
Right.

Initially you're trying to optimize the path for X people. So to get X items
which are distributed in a given way, you're trying to have each person take
the shortest path possible.

However, based on orders, you want to optimize the distribution of items in
the warehouse to further shorten the paths. Granted, that distribution could
be biased wildly based on all sorts of factors (i.e. seasonal activity).

Fun problem to say the least. :)

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javery
Now we know where the Ark of the Covenant really is.

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njharman
So much wasted vertical space?

