We toured an Amazon fulfillment center yesterday. It’s unbelievable. Their inventory storage is counterintuitive. It’s organized randomness. • Inventory is stored on moving shelves. Robots take shelves to the pick stations. • Inventory is randomly placed on shelves, tracked by cameras. • A SKU’s inventory is spread out across bins to always be close to a pick station. • Shelves move over QR codes. Amazon always knows where everything is. • Inventory counts are automated with cameras. The computing that goes into the operation is incredible. Not sure it’d be possible without AWS.
The moving shelves take inventory to human pickers. Pickers remove the item in the order and place them in a bin. Bin travel down miles of track to boxing stations. Tracks either take the order to single unit boxing or multiple unit boxing. Inventory is almost always moving.
@jbryanporter No wonder Amazon accidentally ships the wrong color for sellers!
@jbryanporter I thought they won’t let you take photos and videos…