Peak Season at Amazon was so fun and memorable. 

There are two peak season — the inbound peak and the outbound peak.  Inbound is when inventory is brought into the Fulfillment Centers (FC), which is around August to September.  Thanksgiving and beyond is the outbound peak season.  It’s a busy time of year and was super fun. 

Below is a picture of a Fulfillment Center that only deals with what is knows as "Full-Case, Non-Conveyable", which means that the items are too large to place on a conveyor belt.  

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images

Yeah, that’s a ton of stuff.  From a Lean Manufacturing perspective, the ecommerce model is challenging because we’re dealing with highly variable orders on both mix and quantity and the delicate balance between service level, inventory availability, and holding costs are incredibly challenging.  Heijunka, or Production Leveling in this environment, is quite challenging.  Multi-Echelon Systems are very interesting, to be sure.  Fun times for sure and a dream come true for an Operations, Logistics, Supply Chain, Six Sigma, and Lean geek like me.  In fact, when I taught at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School, several of the case studies my class worked on were from my experience at Amazon. 

Calling on All Former Amazonians

This is an invitation to all former Amazon employees to join the Amazon Alumni Group on Linkedin.  I own the group and we currently have 142 members that were former employees at Amazon.  Some of the former Amazonians are now at Google, eBay, Facebook (9 at Facebook on my last count), Peerflix, Jobster, Microsoft, Last.fm, Yahoo!, TripAdvisor, and at many other high-flying, not-so-high-flying, and other interesting ventures.   To join, please follow the instructions below.

If you were an employee at Amazon, please join the group (must be logged-in on Linkedin).  You can also search to see who the current members are and what they are doing these days.   To be a member, you must show on your Linkedin profile when and what you did at Amazon.com. 

If you are friends with a former Amazon employee, please help spread the word and invite them to join the group.

Disclosure: I was formerly at Amazon in various roles and am thankfully still a minor shareholder.  From an insider’s view, Amazon has warts and zits like every other company, but is generally a very well-run company.  Bezos’ adoption of Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and an absolute focus on the Customer and the Amazon Core Values are really what is keeping the company focused.  "Customer Obsession, not Competitor Focused" was the Amazon mantra and something that has stayed with me. 

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Please find originally-written articles on Queueing Theory below:

• Queueing Theory: Part 1
• Queueing Theory: Part 2
• Queueing Theory: Part 3
• Queueing Theory: Part 4
• What is Waste?
• On Time-Traps and Waste
• Call Centers as Queueing Systems
• Travel Time & Waste
• Little’s Law for Product Development
• YouTube’s Queueing Properties
• Psychology of Queueing and Disneyland
• Queueing, Disneyland, and FastPass
• Multi-Tasking Leads to Lower Productivity
• Queueing Theory and Terrorism
• On Queueing Theory and Elevator Mirrors
• Queueing Psychology at the Gas Pump
• Psychology of Queueing, Haunted Houses, and Halloween
• The Variability Tree

For a few articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

• The Gemba is the Dojo

• Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes

• Order Pipeline of Events

• On Game Theory

• Series on Queueing Theory

• Applied Regression Analysis

• 5S

• Click-to-Ship Processes

• Kanban Sizing and "Pull"

• Lean at Krispy Kreme

• Theory of Constraints and Camping

• Lean for Software Development

• Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

• Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer