Amazon uses robot bookshelves and 8 miles of conveyor belts to speed orders to your door

(Image credit: Andrew Yates/Getty Images)

last updated 8 October 2016

The Amazon package on your doorstep was assembled with just one minute of human labor, CNN Money explains with an equally speedy — and fascinating — video. Amazon warehouses (or "fulfillment centers") are equipped with robot bookshelves that move themselves around the building, taking items to employees instead of requiring humans to fetch the components of each order.

Once every piece of an order is assembled, robots dictate what size box it will go in and even how much tape should be used to seal the package. (Based on some recent deliveries of my own, I'm not personally convinced the machines have nailed the fine art of box selection just yet.) Over the course of the packaging process, every order navigates about eight miles of conveyor belts before finally being pushed down a chute for shipment.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.