On Semiconductor Distribution Center Warehouse example essay topic

"Amazon. co. uk is the trading name for Amazon. com Int'l Sales, Inc. and Amazon Services Europe SARL. Both companies are subsidiaries of Amazon. com -- the leading online retailer of products that inform, educate, entertain and inspire. The Amazon group also has online stores in the United States, Germany, France, Japan and Canada. Amazon. co. uk has its origins in an independent online store, Book pages, which was established in 1996 and acquired by Amazon. com in early 1998". (Amazon. co. uk).

The primary focus of Amazon is selling books via the internet. They also sell and distribute millions of other product too. From cameras to coffee machines, exercise videos to Elvis CDs, they sell just about anything a consumer may be looking for. The company also allows independent sellers to sell new and used items on their Web site via Amazon. co. uk Marketplace. Additionally they give you a variety of resources to help you make your choice, including customer reviews and personal recommendations. In the article "Amazon adventure" taken from Internet Magazine, we get a tour of the Amazon distribution center in the United Kingdom.

The distribution center is a 46,460 square meter warehouse which houses products sold by Amazon. Each item is systematically picked from its storage location, sent to a packaging area and then on to the shipping department to be shipped to each customer. As stated by Marl Mast andrea, the distribution center's manager, "the idea is to keep an even flow", because it is very important in keeping the cycle time to a minimum. From the moment the product is delivered to the door from its hundreds of suppliers, to where it is sent to storage via conveyor belts with totes before the product is picked packaged and shipped to the customer, Amazon maintains an even flow process. The company uses a "picker" much like we have in the On Semiconductor distribution center warehouse. The operator either inputs the order in a computer or in this case, a voice operation, and the "picker" goes to the location the item is stored, picks the item and by conveyor belts, sends the order to the sorting area.

The items are then sorted by order and sent on to the shipping area where the items can be packaged for shipping. When items require manual picking the system gives the staff the shortest possible route to take to gather the items for shipping. As stated by a customer from Switzerland, "Amazon is an extraordinary company, doing business on the Web in a real customer oriented way". This is truly found with the workers and their environment. Music is played throughout the distribution center for the workers to work by and their "working philosophy -- work hard, have fun, make history -- is actually quite revealing". (Amazon. co. uk) The employees work in small teams and care about what they do as they know their customers are counting on them.

The company promotes cross-functional team work to provide all sorts of experience from other parts of the company. This is an attribute to "keeping an even flow". During the Christmas holidays the staff from the main office actually works in the distribution center with everyone else which boosts the employees' moral. The channel of distribution is created by the team work of everyone who works at this distribution center. The team diversity encourages creativity and an open exchange of ideas across groups for the challenges and tradeoffs present across this business. The hands-on approach by the employees, no matter what their role is, ensures that the distribution center's products get to the customers on time.