Inside Newegg NJ: A New Warehouse and Another Contest
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 20, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
How a Bill Becomes a L...err, How an Order Becomes a Tote
If Newegg's warehouse had a pulse it'd be a scary thing, as the system is unbelievably self-aware. The warehouse holds around 20,000 unique products and it is aware of the location and quantities of each and every one of them.
This tote is someone's order, I didn't tinker with it
Totes galore
There are tons of red totes that are constantly traveling through the warehouse on automated conveyor belts. They will keep circling until one of them is needed. When an order comes in from the website and is cleared for processing it is assigned to a tote; the order and the tote are married and are only separated once the order is boxed and ready to be shipped.
The totes run by these barcode scanners constantly, they monitor the contents of the tote and the order, if the order isn't complete it keeps getting routed through the warehouse until every last item is in there.
The tote is routed to various locations in the warehouse and filled by hand before being sent back out the conveyor system. The actual filling of the tote is done manually, but tracking the tote and deciding where it has to go is entirely automated. The warehouse knows where to send the totes and it can even detect traffic jams and slow totes down if need be.
Speedy totes
The entire system is optimized so that if the product is in stock in the warehouse closest to you, and your order is placed by 2PM EST, it will ship out that same day. Thanks to careful placement of these warehouses, you should be able to get what you ordered within a couple of days without having to pay for more expensive shipping. It's good to see that Newegg's goal of optimizing for ground shipping is still top priority.
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zshift - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
Man, I was so hyped by that article and then reading about the sweepstakes. Then I read that Florida is exempt from the contest.... My heart has grown a small crack in it today.neon - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
... it opened its first warehouse on the east coast in Tennessee.A slight correction - Tennessee is on the west coast of the Mississippi R.
NINaudio - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
to correct your "correction", the western border of Tennessee is the eastern shore of the Mississippe River. Tennessee is also directly west of North Carolina, which is an eastern coastal state..Not really sure where you get your maps from. =p
johnsonx - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
Presumably he's being tongue-in-cheek, as in suggesting that anything west of the mississippi doesn't really matter, so therefore Tennessee IS the 'west coast'.As 'true' west coaster, I can assure him that in actual fact, nothing east of the rockies really matters.
Matt Campbell - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
I can only see about 25 in the picture, but the numbers on the doors go up to 62. Even 25 lanes with multiple shipments per day is impressive!AmberClad - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
I don't think all of those are for outbound customer order shipments...some of those might be for trucks carrying products into the warehouse.esandrs - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
I just want NewEgg to get their B2B / Purchase Order system back up and running so I can give them my company's money, too!They're still the easiest vendor for me to purchase from, but without PO's I'm stuck ordering much of my hardware elsewhere [sniff].
johnsonx - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
Actually I found their B2B system to be quite a headache to use, since it wasn't integrated with the regular order system; either had to call the rep, or put the products in a wish list, flag it shared, and then e-mail the list to the rep. I was glad to have it though, while it lasted. My rep almost always either waived shipping, or just charged $20 on an order that would have been upwards of $60 shipping.I wonder what happened to all the B2B reps? Canned? I e-mailed my rep within minutes of getting the notice that they were shutting down the department, and I never got an answer.
esandrs - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
Yeah, the "old" B2B wasn't the easiest, but [sadly!] it was still better than most my other options. I didn't find the Wish List -> Email route too horrible.FYI, yes, nearly all the B2B reps were "let go". I only know because our rep was one of the few retained (and assigned different duties).
I don't vividly recall what was all in the public announcement and what we learned via email, but the "new and improved" B2B model was targeted to go online Q3 2008...
donkeycrock - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
I second that, i love newegg, but the fact that they dont do business accounts makes me wonder. WTF are you insanely stupid.