Plant Trek: Amazon

*Note this pic is from google, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside

Before our tour at Amazon, I had never thought about what it must take Amazon to get just about anything in the mail to me within 2 days. I have a newfound appreciation for what they do. One of the best parts of the tour was just walking around their “libraries” of items. I saw just about everything that day even gingerbread marshmallows. I also enjoyed seeing the automatic packer that creates a box around the product and then with bar codes figures out which city it is going to and sends it to the right truck all automatically. It was all really, really impressive. I want to meet the people that designed the ‘production’ process and the people who made the optimization program that says where all the product needs to be across the US and how much to store where.

Fun Facts:

• The facility general manager was an LGO grad.
• Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. This was above the front doors as we walked in the facility and I like it.
• The Phoenix facility ships hundreds of thousands of items per day.
• Amazon started by fulfilling orders in Jeff Bezos’ home.
• They increase their employee base with 3X the workers over the holidays
• The last item bought and delivered before Christmas was ordered at 2:35pm and was delivered at 6:15pm. It was a rechargeable battery pack.
• If you stacked up the all of the copies sold during the 2011 holiday season of the Steve Jobs book it would be taller than Mt. Everest.
• None of Amazon’s sites are unionized.
• Amazon runs the largest website in the world.
• It only takes moments between when you place an order on amazon.com and when it arrives in a picker’s handset to go find.
• It takes 1-2 hours between the picker getting it to it being sorted, packed, and on to a UPS truck.