How Does Amazon Deliver Stuff So Fast? - Money | HowStuffWorks

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How do online retailers actually make those products magically appear on our doorsteps?

It's a combination of advances in logistics, the art and science of planning transportation to achieve maximum efficiency and reliability, and adept research that enables companies to predict consumers' purchases in advance, according to Tinglong Dai. He's a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School and an expert in operations management, a discipline devoted to making businesses more efficient.

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Dai says that researchers and experts at universities have been working with major companies for years, helping them to speed up their supply chains and shorten their delivery time.

"It's not that difficult to deliver products quickly, per se," Dai explains. "The target is always to deliver stuff quickly but also in a low-cost manner. You can always send something from point A to point B quickly, but it just might be very expensive."

"Basically, you have to figure out a trade-off among responsiveness, cost and quality," Dai continues.

That means shipping products as cheaply as possible, but while also ensuring that there's a variety of stuff for consumers to pick from, and that they can customize their order and make it slightly different from, say, their neighbor down the street.

Operations management researchers in academia have been working with companies for years, trying to speed up offense to try to reduce delivery time.

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Amazon fulfillment centers changed the delivery game because they allow the e-commerce giant to deal with uncertainty and fluctuations in demand. Amazon

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