1257

1257) Amazon: The Everything Store

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• published: 15 Apr 2014
• views: 8786

5) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen: If you ever wondered what happens after you've clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a look. If there is such a thing as Santa's workshop, this would be it. A 1.2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the holiday shopping season. There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers. Tomorrow, on what is known as Cyber Monday, it's expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on Amazon. "If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were very primitive." Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon, with an estimated worth of at least $25 billion. He sold his first book on Amazon in another era, back in 1995. Part of what Amazon customers expect—"We want it now!" What's happening at the fulfillment centers that have made that possible? "The secret is we're on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers. And we have gotten better every time. When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift. And..." You've got a forklift. "We've got forklifts." There's very little Amazon doesn't have. "Right now we're really in the center of what is the physical manifestation of Earth's biggest selection." Amazon vice president Dave Clark showed us how the process begins. After the products arrive into the building, they are immediately scanned. The products are then placed by stackers in what seems to outsiders as a haphazard way...a book on Buddhism and Zen resting next to Mrs. Potato Head... Here's what I want to know. This is a Swiffer. It's sitting next to the Encyclopedia of World History. That doesn't make any sense to me. Does it make sense to you? "It, it does." What?! "Because those 2 things, you look at how these items fit in the bin. They're optimized for utilizing the available space. And we have computers and algorithmic work that tells people the areas of the building that have the most space to put product in that's coming in at that time." Amazon has become so efficient with its stacking, it can now store twice as many goods in its centers as it did five years ago. "Anything you want on, on Earth you're gonna get from us." Anything you want on Earth you're gonna get from us? "That's where we're headed I believe." Once your order is placed, the so-called pick ambassador walks the aisles, plucking and scanning your items before placing them in bins. Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items.