Inside Newegg: They give us a Tour and you a Prize
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 14, 2006 3:31 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
The Picker
Finally, at the very back of the warehouse there's a three-level rack/picker setup and this is where your order from Newegg is actually born.
The three levels are organized in terms of product "velocity" or the speed at which Newegg sells through of that particular product. A proprietary algorithm designed in-house by Newegg determines velocity. High velocity products (pictured below) such as in-demand motherboards or video cards will be found on the first floor, while medium and low velocity products such as server boards, certain optical drives, etc... will be found on the second and third floors respectively. The idea is that the easiest to load floor is the first floor, and that's where product that needs to be frequently replenished should be.
Some "medium velocity" items
As soon as Newegg receives your order it is allocated a bar-coded tub; the encoded in the tub's label is data on every item that's in your order as well as where it is located within Newegg's warehouse. The automated system will not print a shipping label for your order unless every item in your order matches all of the barcodes in the tub.
The tub glides along a rolling conveyer, which will carry the tub from the start on the first floor all the way up to the third floor. Along its journey it will pass by Newegg's inventory; the system (pictured below), knowing exactly what your order should contain, will stop the tub whenever it gets to an item that needs to be put into it.
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jamesbond007 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Thanks Anand and NewEgg for the great pics and tour! As a long-time NewEgg customer, it was very intriguing to read the article and gaze at the pictures because I've always wondered how a place like that worked. =)Cheers!
~Travis W.
flexy - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
this looks sooooooooooooooo much like my f****g work - except that the items at newegg are approx. 10000000 times more interesting than what we deal with every day ;)bbomb - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
I worked on an aembly line putting together boxes for vent hoods to go in. That was the longest fucking week of my life. I wonder why the vent hood people didnt have the box-putter-together machine.PandaBear - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
The last company I worked for used to be part of Mitsubishi, and you would be surprised how much cheaper our shipping was compare to you going to Kinko's yourself, it was almost 1/2 off.I would imagine Newegg got a deal with UPS that makes it much cheaper than FedEx Ground.
Reflex - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Been a customer of theirs for years, pretty much since Egghead went under(remember them?). Service has always been great and they are the first place I reccomend to techs and resellers. Sure beats the old days of having to have a tax ID and account with a distributer.Powermoloch - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Thanks for the article Anand...really appreciate it. I didn't expect the warehouse to look like that !cw42 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
pics coulda been better, but AWESOME ARTICLE.Thanks newegg.
bob661 - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link
Pics looked good to me.StevenYoo - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
nice read.man, part of me really wants to win that CPU!
but the other part of me doesn't so I don't have to buy a new mobo, etc.
NeonAura - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link
Contest for AMD X2s.. excellent :)And, there shouldn't be many entries outside of Anandtech, because the contest entry isn't open for a long time and because the link's broken. Noobs won't get it :)