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Amazon's world

Someone quoted that we live in Amazon's world now.  We just don't know it.

From its origins as an online bookseller to running some of the world's largest cloud computing platforms, to selling almost any product online while also selling fresh produce and variety of other foods and exotic Sauternes and cakes for all occasions to pouring beer on tap; through its brick and mortar presence this company has made huge strides in all manner of business.

I for one am an outsider.  And I got a chance to look in.  Literally.  For someone who has only bought some printer ink on Amazon a few years ago (I like to feel my melon and socks before I buy), I got to visit one of their large fulfilment centers in San Francisco area.

It is located in the farm country where land is cheap.  It is about two hour drive outside of San Francisco proper.  But the warehousing and fulfilment operation they run there is top notch.



Tracy fulfilment center



Waiting area to suit up and hear a safety lecture as well as a Amazon is great spiel - to be expected


After waiting for all the tour attendees to assemble the assigned guide and three other staff who chaperoned us took us upstairs to get suited up.  With wireless headsets we were able to hear our guide's narration of the facility and its statistics tuning out the constant humming and churning of the hundreds of robotic machinery at work.


Above pic of one of the 75,000 yellow totes that run around on belts carrying merchandise that someone ordered seconds ago..


Got to see the entire lifecycle of a widget from the point that it came in and was received to the point where an actual customer order triggered it for delivery to its multitude of pick, pack and ship points through the labeling and onward via a series of automated belts and robots to the final pallet ready to go into the belly of a semi tractor trailer sitting on the dock.  It reminded me of a Honeywell facility in the midwest where I had done an IT project to help them with exactly that - prepare shipping labels to items packed in their warehouse.  Those robots used guide wires embedded in the floor.  Now the tech has improved where there are QR codes stuck to the floor that the entire roving robot assembly made by Kiva can read and decide where they need to take their baskets full of goods.

They can handle over 100 orders per second at any given point on some of the busiest days and ship to 170 plus countries from this particular location.

It was an hour well spent.

While leaving I got a die cast Amazon Boeing plane as swag.. pretty cool.

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