Surging online orders slow Wal-Mart delivery network

The dirty little secret is that Walmart (Walmart!) and Costco’s online ordering systems work better than Amazon’s. Amazon is obsessed with selling you things you don’t want. Meanwhile, you don’t have to even be a Costco member to shop online at Costco- they charge you a teeny fine. And much stuff you can pick up at Walmart: free shipping, and if there’s something wrong, you’re right there.

I've been doing ecommerce for years, and I think one of the best-kept secrets of the industry is that their fulfillment systems exist. Even inside of the company, the warehouse guys seem like they're second-class citizens. But I think if you're honest the warehouse management systems are where the science part of computer science really lands. You are doing literal knapsack problems and Eulerian paths. Queues and schedules and producer/consumer problems abound!

Oddly, evidence seems to suggest that companies can get by with treating their fulfillment systems as unimportant, but I have to think there is some value in recognizing their value and getting them tooled up before a surge of orders comes in on the front-end and there's no capacity on the back-end to handle them.