Ever wonder how in the world the AMAZON warehouse system actually works ???

[MikeyL]

Take a looksee at this incredible video and be amazed.
It's actually a little mod-boggling. Ya mighty haveta watch it a couple of times to get a real idea of how it all works. Enjoy, Mikey Lulejian - Still out here on a COLD Lake Oconee, GA

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/how-the-amazon-warehouse-works

 

[latitudeadjuster]

Ive see than when it was on tv....pretty crazy.....I have one of those robot vacuums probably same company makes both. Wait till they start using the drones for delivery. We have two Amazon distributions here in Virginia

 

[Julian]

Pretty amazing isn't it! Drone delivery will be interesting if it takes off! (pardon the pun!!!) I can imagine a business in shooting down drones for their cargo emerging! Anyone follow the French story with drones over flying their nuclear plants?

 

[Wayloncle]

That's pretty cool....how do the packages/items get on all the shelves and if they are moving back to different locations how do they know where the Blue T-Shirt went?
Crazy to think about all the senarios.

 

[Murf'n'surf]

Very cool! I did not know this type of warehousing existed

 

[Ronnie]

That was interesting, thanks for sharing.

 

[Gym]

That's pretty cool....how do the packages/items get on all the shelves and if they are moving back to different locations how do they know where the Blue T-Shirt went?
Crazy to think about all the senarios.

Pretty interesting. I'm sure the warehouse is set up in a grid fashion where each grid has an alphanumeric designation. The robot would report the location where it left the blue T-Shirt so the main computer, thus the drones, always know where an item is.

 

[davel501]

That's pretty cool....how do the packages/items get on all the shelves and if they are moving back to different locations how do they know where the Blue T-Shirt went?
Crazy to think about all the senarios.

The computer just has to remember where it put the rack. They probably refer to the shelves as bins and the rack is just a collection of bins. There is probably some algorithm to keep the popular items close at hand because over time it will save a ton of time and electricity.

Warehouses like this typically run in 2 phases, shipping and receiving. The receiving phase is usually the longer one because you have to break down packaging, etc. Basically the way it works is you have a shipping cut off time where you last package has to tip to the truck to make it into the carriers stream that day so you back up from that with how long it takes to pick all of your orders, add some safety time and the rest is receiving time. This warehouse is interesting because they waste a ton of vertical space but the computer just brings them a shelf to put the item onto or pick it from. Betting the trade-off here is that they might waste some vertical space but they can ship and receive (cross-dock) where inventory is brought in and shipped out as quickly as possible to push as much low margin revenue through the system as possible.

 

[latitudeadjuster]

yea....if the stocker, person putting items on bin when received messes up and scans wrong bin and places item it still can be a mess. OR if the person packing picks up the wrong item off a bin and realizes it is the wrong item and the bin has already moved off, can be a mess. So human error is always a factor in this type of manufacturing/distribution.

 

[Noko]

Gotta love Amazon, they keep my company really busy around the Holidays.