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Inside Amazon’s ‘Chaotic Storage’ Warehouses
[video
at bottom shows robots running Chaotic Storage]
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As
the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon needs somewhere to put all of those products. The
solution? Giant warehouses. Eighty to be exact. Strategically located
near key shipping hubs around the world. The warehouses themselves are massive,
with some over 1.2 million square feet in size (111,484 sq m). And at the
heart of this global operation are people (over 65,000 of them), and a
logistics system known as chaotic storage.
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Chaotic storage is like organized confusion. It’s
an organic shelving system without permanent areas or sections. That means there is no area just for
books, or a place just for televisions (like you might expect in a retail store
layout). The product’s
characteristics and attributes are irrelevant. What’s important is the unique
barcode associated with every
product that enters the warehouse.
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Every
single shelf space inside an Amazon warehouse has a barcode. And every incoming
product that requires storage is assigned a specific barcode that matches
the shelf space in which it will be stored. This allows free space to be
filled quickly and efficiently.
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At
the heart of the operation is a sophisticated database that tracks and monitors
every single product that enters/leaves the warehouse and keeps a tally on
every single shelf space and whether it’s empty or contains a product.
There are several key advantages to the chaotic storage
system. First is flexibility with chaotic storage, freed-up space can be refilled immediately. Second is
simplicity. New employees don’t need to learn where types of products are
located. They simply need to find
the storage shelf within the warehouse. You don’t need to know what the product
is, just where it is. Lastly is
optimization.
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Amazon
must handle millions and millions of orders. That means that at any given
moment there is a long list of products that need to be ‘picked’ from the
shelves and prepared for shipment. Since there is a database that knows every
product required for shipment and the location of each product inside the
warehouse, an optimized route can be provided to employees responsible for
fulfilment.
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Since Amazon deals
with such a wide variety of products there are a few exceptions to the rule. Really fast-moving articles do not
adhere to the same storage system since they enter and leave the warehouse so
quickly. Really bulky and heavy
products still require separate storage areas and perishable goods are not
ideal for obvious reasons.
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In this storage system a wide variety of products
can be found located next to each other, a
necklace could be located beside a DVD and underneath a set of power tools. This arbitrary placement can even help
with accuracy as it makes mix-ups less likely when picking orders for shipment.
Overall it’s a fascinating system that at its
core is powered by a complex database yet run by a simple philosophy. It’s Chaotic Storage. There’s no
better way to put it.
Now that you have a basic idea of
what they do and how they do it – here’s a video of the system working:
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