GeekWire is a technology news site headquartered in Seattle, and the hosts Todd Bishop and John Cook have released a video from inside Amazon's newest fulfillment center.

Kiva robots bring the warehouse shelves to pick-stations where employees pull the items on display from the schedule monitor.

Whoa. They were hiring like crazy over here. I heard people drop like flies in the Amazon warehouses from exhaustion and the temp agencies have a line of temps to replace those who quit.

As I understand it, Amazon is doing the retrofit to it's older warehouses to bring them all up to the new standard of fulfillment speed.

Having the shelves move to "pick stations" is faster and each facility holds a lot more inventory. The warehouse no longer needs aisles forklift-wide and re-stocking is just as easy for inventory.

I worked at an online retailer before and it was just non stop from November to late December. We had a bin we carried and ran around with purchase orders.

I've also heard extensive stories about this. So as difficult as it is I avoid Amazon. If there is something I just have to have, I am willing to buy from an Amazon affiliate, if I can't find it anywhere else. Those are often independent stores or other small businesses that use Amazon to sell to a wider market. But I try to buy locally, and used if I can't, and from a specialty company if neither of those is possible.

There was a time when I used Amazon for everything. It was awesome to order all the xmas presents at the same time. They are very good at customer satisfaction. But when I found out about how (not) good they are at worker treatment it really turned me off. Their effect on the economy also isn't too cool with me.

Adventure of Link who used to mod here works at one of the fulfillment centers, I'd like to hear his take on this.

ditto

Yeah, Links was cool. I keep thinking he will stop by one day, we'll see.

GeekWire got a lot of information from Amazon about it's warehouse retrofit plans. The economics are pushing for more changes at the warehouse level. Too much floor space is wasted with aisles wide enough for people and forklifts. The Kivabots are faster and can "line-up" items for fulfillment time savings.

The old style warehouse's days are numbered and it's about time, imo.

FTFY

Thanks for posting the Distribution Center video. There are more Fulfillment Centers in the works as Amazon keeps growing.

For all its size Amazon is tiny compared to Walmart. Walmart's sales for 2014 were 6X the total of Amazon's, and money is what it's all about.

^ Walmart is a world on its own. Not only money wise, just take a look at the oddities marching in n out.

Lol, next time I go to Walmart I'll try to walk upright.

I still talk to Link on Facebook. I'm not sure if he still works there or not. I still love Amazon. I'm a Prime member and love the two day shipping and how easy it is to do returns. Lately though I have been ordering through other companies, simply because they have a better price, but their crappy customer service make me sometimes wish I went through Amazon and paid the extra money.

They may not be the best place to work, but at least they are providing jobs here. They could easily open up shop in Mexico and truck the goods to a shipping location in the Texas or some other boarder state. Don't let those number fool you, they end up breaking even or losing money every year. They are one of the least profitable companies online for their size. As for them hurting the economy, there are many companies that sell through them that are making a profit. Anyone can sell through Amazon. The more companies that sell goods and services, the better it is for us the consumer because it creates competition. While you may not make 25 an hour in a climate control warehouse, with a petition and full benefits, they are still providing jobs that people otherwise wouldn't have. Maybe people are just not a tough as they use to be and want big money for doing low skill labor? The record number of people on welfare when there many jobs in demand leads me to believe this. I worked crappy jobs and worked my way up. Many people don't want to do that anymore.