Derek Press

I just read a great post on AnandTech.com titled Inside Newegg that takes a tour of a Newegg facility. I always like to get a peek into the warehouse/assembly line/order fulfillment part of a business, especially a large online-only retailer like Amazon, Newegg, or Overstock. The article details the layout of the warehouse, the “picker”, a system that moves a tub around the warehouse, and the shipping process.

Any self-respecting nerd should know and love Newegg. They have a huge selection, great prices, fast (and often free) shipping, and great customer service. What’s not to love? I’ve purchased lots of hard drives, video cards, motherboards and CPUs, optical drives, a few TV antennas, tons of various parts, and even an Xbox 360 from them. Only once have I returned something and that was because a graphics card was too loud for my home theater PC. Not Newegg’s fault and the RMA was painless.

So how does an online retailer acquire and retain customers? Well, lots of ways. But one of the biggest is efficiency. I hear people all the time say “Oh you’re one of those who buys a lot of stuff online. I would do that more but I hate waiting for the shipping.” Well, if the company is efficient, you can get your order in 3-5 days with free shipping and two-day or even overnight if you’re willing to pay for it. With the money you can save on higher-priced items, the three day wait is almost always worth it. Of course, some of that efficiency comes from the carrier but if the online retailer’s order fulfillment process is not good, your order won’t even be shipped for a few days.

Given the number of products a site like Amazon or Newegg carries, it’s quite fascinating. Automation, optimization, and organization are what makes these places tick.  The process of making relatively simple tasks that you perform over and over, easier and more efficient for everyone involved is something I’ve always enjoyed. Both in the real world and in computers.

I’ve always had fun putting together Windows batch files, programming Job Control Language in a college course, and working with software called Automate at my employer. Automate is basically its own programming language with pre-defined steps that the computer will execute. A huge, visual batch file, if you will. There are about 30 tasks that need to be run either daily, weekly, or monthly that I manage. Being assigned a new task and figuring out the necessary steps, the correct order, testing your steps, and then troubleshooting any problems really gets my brain going.

Maybe I should look in to a career in this area. Operations, I guess? I like the immediate feedback, analyzing the results, and then tweaking the process to make it better as well as removing the possibilities of bugs and errors. I’ve also always thought that doing the ordering and analyzing for a retail or grocery store would be fun; deciding which products to sell based on wholesale price, shelf time, shelf life, etc. to achieve the highest profit.

I had to take two Statistics courses in college. I hated them both for the most part. Now that I look back on it, I think it was for two reasons: the professor was an ass, and both classes were at 8am. I might have enjoyed it more were it not for those factors. In Stats II we did this group assignment where we were running a fictional factory. Every week, the professor would generate some numbers and then you had to decide, based on those numbers, the number of different widgets to produce to maximize your profit. You’d have to consider the price of the raw materials of each widget, the sale price (and thus profit), and how long it took you to assemble each one.

Something like that. Told you it was at 8am. Anyway, the point is that I think this stuff is cool and gets my brain in ways that other stuff doesn’t.

I’ll soon have a post up about maximizing your online shopping experience to save as much time, money, and frustration as possible so check back or subscribe to my RSS feed!