Trying to move away from Amazon, but other sellers need to catch up

[LCHIEN]

Another thing about Amazon is their warehouse. About a 2 years ago I took a free tour of the local amazon warehouse operation. It was amazing and demonstrated a level of sophistication that they had spent a fortune designing.

Its been a while and I'll try and recount some of the cool things. If you get a chance, google amazon warehouse tour and see if you can get one of the free ones. Well worth it.

• this was a warehouse for small items. They actually have warehouses sorted by sizes which makes sense based on the size of handling and packing requirements
• First the robots. Tracks in the floor - the robots are just small flat platforms that can rotate 90 degrees to go right left forwards backwards along the tracks. Only about 6 inches high, they can also lift the platform up a few inches.
• The inventory is all stored on square shelf units about 2ft x 2 ft. With four legs. They are parked on the tracks. The robots go underneath them between the legs and lift them up to move them anywhere on the tracks. These are virtual tracks I can't recall if marked with optical codes probably. Each shelf is marked with codes and the computer keeps track of which shelves are dropped where or on what robot and even which way tis rotated..
• Inventory is sorted on receipt and stashed in the cubbies in the shelf units wherever there is space. If they lost their database, they would lose all their inventory. Basically a guy at a workstation scans the item and its UPC and measures the size and the Amazon computer sends a nearby shelf with space on it t for him to put the item in a specified cubbyhole
• when someone orders an item, the order is given to someone at a workstation. A series of robotically directed shelves will come by his station and rotate to the right side and indicated the cubby hole to be fetched. It confirms the codes match and he puts in in a numbered basket until your order is complete. Then the basket is moved on a conveyor and he fills the next order. He never has to move... everything is brought to him.
• The basket heads on to a packer. He has a station surrounded by numbered collapsed boxes, The computer will have computed a box that will fit the largest item and fit all the items (it knows all the sizes). The computer then commands a tape dispenser that moistens and spits out pieces of tape the exact length needed and the packer loads the box. Somewhere A label is printed and put on the box. The conveyer then carries the box past a series of shipping bays where large bins are filled with the packages destines for UPS, USPS, Amazon or whoever and the packaged automatically directed into the right bin for periodic pickup by the designated shipper.
• All this is done within a few hours after you place the order/

Its quite amazing to watch... its very efficient. Each worker has a station and really interacts with no one else; the computer keeps track of his productivity. so each guy can dome in to work on his own schedule. and is assigned to an open workstation.

Probably the downside I see is that workers have little interaction with others. They are given periodic breaks and there is a break room but I imagine it must be kind of isolated.

But man their warehousing and shipping is more impressive than it appears even with 2 day delivery.

https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/tours

note, it looks like they only do virtual on-line tours during pandemic days, I went before that time. They do indicate they will have in person tours again. Link above,