A CASE STUDY FOR DISTRIBUTION INDUSTRY FOR OCR 'A' GCSE
(have always tended to use Argos...) - thanks to jhc on SLN Forum for the push...
Following quotes taken from an article by Kim Gilmour from 2003, published in "Internet Magazine"
"Five thousand metres of well-oiled conveyor belts roll constantly up and down at Amazon.co.uk's distribution centre. At 46,450 square metres, the Marston Gate warehouse is the largest e-commerce distribution centre in Europe. Walk the length of it and you'll see masses of empty space for Amazon to take on even more product lines, or extra stock during frantic holiday periods. This hotbed of picking, packing and dispatching, which lies just off junction 13 on the M1, handles thousands of items every hour. But Amazon.co.uk's distribution centre is far from being a faceless, fully-automated operation. You won't see chrome-plated machines or space-age robots picking goods off the shelves. And there are no funky twenty-somethings riding Segway scooters around the warehouse floor, as we discovered when we visited in June. People from every walk of life are working here. Skilful hands deftly stuff books into pigeon holes. Amiable grannies expertly wrap odd-shaped gifts. Young men stack books and CDs onto shelves and move kitchen appliances around the floor to a soundtrack of inoffensive pop music.
A huge banner above the workers' heads reads: 'Safety protects people. Quality protects customers'.
The odd forklift whizzes by, loaded with packing crates. Huge trolleys of air-filled packaging wait to be stuffed in boxes. Then the lunch whistle blows, and everyone flows out into the company cafeteria for a quick coffee and a chat."
Of course the warehouse is now even larger with extra levels, and undoubtedly more capacity than in 2003.