But have you ever wondered how those packages get to you so fast? Overnight, or even in just a couple hours?
With the holiday shopping season in full swing, WUSA9 toured Amazon’s Baltimore Fulfillment Center, one of the largest in the world. The sprawling facility is 1.2-million-square-feet, with more than 4,000 employees.
“This week we will be able to do a million units a day,” said Amazon Assistant General Manager Tori Wilson.
Those workers are matched with an army of robotic co-workers. Wilson said that technology “really helps us to be efficient and make sure you get the right item.”
All that inventory for sale on Amazon is brought to a fulfillment center like the one in Baltimore. Then randomly placed into robotic pods guided by sensors on the floor.
“If you order two things, one might be over here and one might be hundreds of meters on the other side of the building, and our software will match them up,” Wilson said standing in the middle of the fulfillment center.
The robotic pods head to human hands that pick out whatever was ordered following prompts on a screen.
“So whatever is closest to him comes immediately,” Wilson said standing next to an Amazon employee known as a “picker.”
"So as soon as you click order, it might come right to his station; he’ll pick it out and put it in a tote,” she said, referring to a yellow bin which is then sent down the line on a conveyor belt.
Even the boxing process is technology driven. The computer screen tells the worker which size box to grab, and spits out a precut, premeasured piece of packing tape to seal it.
One of the final steps of the process is sending packaged and addressed items down a final conveyor belt, electronically scanning each one to identify where it’s headed.
The conveyor belt is timed so small yellow pushers knock the package into the right chute where a truck is waiting on the other end to take it to the customer’s door.
Wilson said all the high-tech shipping software is the reason you can order something on Amazon in the morning, and have it at your door by the afternoon.
Not surprisingly, Amazon says the week leading up to Christmas is the Baltimore fulfilment center’s busiest of the year. It runs nearly 24/7 operations right up until Christmas Eve.