The power of chaos to successfully manage a warehouse
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:50 am
In courses on logistics, production management and warehouse management , it is common to hear the message that stocks must be organized in order to be managed efficiently. This theory seems to make sense, until you discover how an Amazon warehouse works in What it looks like inside Amazon.com .
It turns out that a company like Amazon, which is a leader in e-commerce services worldwide, does not work as is usually taught in most logistics courses, but rather with a strategy based on chaos and that sacrifices order in exchange for a series of advantages offered by its storage system. Entropy to the power.
Advantages of chaos over order in the management of a large warehouse
Among the advantages offered by Amazon's storage system is a lower learning curve for employees, since they do not have to learn or memorise the locations or rules for placing material in the different warehouse positions. The time required to assimilate the training required for a person to be ready to start performing at their best is reduced, which results in lower training costs.
If we look at the images, the material is stored at a height, which means that the handling movements to pick up a unit will be easier than if the space had been used at a height and the operators had to use elements such as forklifts. More space is taken up, but it takes less time to prepare the orders, which leads to a lower order preparation cost .
Another key point is the placement of the finance and banking email list material, which does not follow any rules of order by category or similar. A computer system decides where to place each reference, based on the availability of spaces and assigns each product a bar code that identifies the place where it is stored. In this way, they manage to optimize the warehouse occupation, placing each product where there is space available. This optimizes the storage cost due to the space consumed by the facilities.
When preparing orders, the system prepares a list of what the operator needs to pick and suggests the optimal route to follow. This reduces preparation time and makes picking more efficient.
Here's an example: this is how an Amazon warehouse works
To conclude, this interesting video shows the operation of the warehouse that Amazon Spain has set up in San Fernando de Henares, Madrid. At the very least, it is interesting to see how the warehouse of a company that in its 19 years of existence has become a global distribution giant and an undisputed reference in the e-commerce sector works.
It turns out that a company like Amazon, which is a leader in e-commerce services worldwide, does not work as is usually taught in most logistics courses, but rather with a strategy based on chaos and that sacrifices order in exchange for a series of advantages offered by its storage system. Entropy to the power.
Advantages of chaos over order in the management of a large warehouse
Among the advantages offered by Amazon's storage system is a lower learning curve for employees, since they do not have to learn or memorise the locations or rules for placing material in the different warehouse positions. The time required to assimilate the training required for a person to be ready to start performing at their best is reduced, which results in lower training costs.
If we look at the images, the material is stored at a height, which means that the handling movements to pick up a unit will be easier than if the space had been used at a height and the operators had to use elements such as forklifts. More space is taken up, but it takes less time to prepare the orders, which leads to a lower order preparation cost .
Another key point is the placement of the finance and banking email list material, which does not follow any rules of order by category or similar. A computer system decides where to place each reference, based on the availability of spaces and assigns each product a bar code that identifies the place where it is stored. In this way, they manage to optimize the warehouse occupation, placing each product where there is space available. This optimizes the storage cost due to the space consumed by the facilities.
When preparing orders, the system prepares a list of what the operator needs to pick and suggests the optimal route to follow. This reduces preparation time and makes picking more efficient.
Here's an example: this is how an Amazon warehouse works
To conclude, this interesting video shows the operation of the warehouse that Amazon Spain has set up in San Fernando de Henares, Madrid. At the very least, it is interesting to see how the warehouse of a company that in its 19 years of existence has become a global distribution giant and an undisputed reference in the e-commerce sector works.