How do companies such as Amazon manage to get you your products in just two days? Marcus Wohlsen reported:

• Most distribution centers are still run by humans who go and pick your products for you from shelves.
• But there is a move towards automated robots. One type, that go to the shelf and bring the product back, can fill 1,000 orders in an hour.
• Amazon instead has invested in robots that lift the shelves themselves and then brings them over to workers who are guided by lasers to find the exact product to pack.
  • The robots that pick the shelves learn over time which shelves get used more often and keep them closer to the front, meaning that the process gets faster with experience.

Read more about the conditions in the factories, and why the quest for speed has become so important over here.

Source: Wired