Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, founded this organization with one goal in mind. This goal is the commitment to sell more items at a lower cost, rather than a few items at a higher cost, while simultaneously attempting to cut operating costs. One look at Amazon's warehouse is all you need to see in order to know that they are truly committed to achieving that goal. The utilization of random storage helps workers to manage the massive amounts of inventory stored at the warehouse. They also utilize a process that can keep up with the massive demand from consumers and makes the whole process run smoothly to ensure that everyone gets what they want in a timely manner.
The entirety of the warehouse process is extremely efficient. Upon arrival at the warehouse, the product is scanned and placed in one of the numerous storage cubes. Only now will the item appear available to purchase online. The location of each item in the warehouse is not stored with similar products, it is instead placed in random cube next to items that are nothing like it. This is called random storage, and while it may seem ineffective, this method is the most efficient way to store inventory. This process is very similar to using the search function on your computer. Instead of creating, organizing, and managing thousands of storage folders on your computer, the search function can instead be used to find the item you're looking for in the least amount of time.
When an item in purchased online, the workers, known as pickers, are sent to the appropriate storage cube to retrieve the item. The item is then scanned, as well as the item location, and is then placed in the trolley and sent to be packaged and shipped. The scanners used by the pickers tell them exactly what item needs to be collected, where it's located, and the optimal route that should be used to arrive at the desired storage cube. Upon arrival at the packing area, the product is scanned once more.
