Fascinating article:
And photos:
Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.
The thing it doesn’t cover is how the day’s needed DVDs get from the storage area into the hands of the packers. Even considering that they are categorized in an efficient way, the process of pulling thousands of DVDs from among millions of DVDs (from a printed list?) would seem to be quite labor intensive. Maybe the process is part of the “trade secrets” the writer alludes to.
If I understood your question correctly, it would seem to be answered by this part:
Packing is automated. The 42 workers are unpacking, because there’s no guarantee the customer will return the disc in exactly the correct manner for automation.
This also illustrates why Netflix wants to go to streaming video so badly. Forty-two workers for a single location whose only job is to unpack returned discs. Even paying minimum wage, that’s over $600,000/year in payroll. And this is just one of 58 locations, so assuming similar numbers that’s $35 million/year. I can’t imagine that storage and bandwidth could even come close to that.
Looks like my plans to leave little notes for the next guy that rents the DVD are crushed.
Wow, that is amazing.
I can see why moving toward streaming video is a huge deal for a company like that. Imagine if there was no physical media to be dealt with for the company. They’d save a ton.
I can see one problem right off:
Wrong way to clean a digital disk. Should be an across, not a circular motion. I wonder if the article writer was less than perfectly observant?
Or maybe this is one of the trade secrets he promised not to reveal.
If this is true, it sounds like they separate the desired disks this way rather than a pick system. Still, if a disc isn’t rented for 30 days, it seems like an awful lot of machine handling to accumulate.
So, unlike a traditional pick system, where someone or something goes into the warehouse to select the product, they do the reverse: the entire inventory is brought to the pick station. This works only if all products are the same size and shape. Imagine how this would be with auto parts.
I wonder if they even bother recording where a particular disc is stored. If every disc passes the sorter/extractor once a day, it will be found no matter where it is in the stack. As long as you can find it within 24 hours, why worry about where it resides overnight?
This article doesn’t explain what I experience here in the Las Vegas Valley, tho.
If I put a DVD in my mailbox for return, my postal carrier doesn’t pick it up until about 4:30pm. That’s what time he comes by my house, every day. By 7pm, I’ve got an email from Netflix, telling me that they’ve received said DVD, and the next one is on the way.
I may be off on this, but I believe some Netflix areas have deals worked out with their local post offices that once a disc comes into the post office Netflix is notified by that post office, thereby making it count as though the DVD was in their hands.
Actually, it should be radially from the center out toward the edge, so that any scratches the “cleaning” process introduces are as close as possible to perpendicular to the path of the data in the disk, minimizing the chance of interference with the read process.
Absolutely right. Now can you design a simple, cheap device, costing no more than a towel stretched over a board, that allows an op to wipe in that direction and still get 650 discs processed in an hour? If so, Netflix wants YOU.
But without opening the mailer, they don’t know what the disc is, and can’t send the sender an email. That would require a processing station inside the Post Office.
The return envelope has a window for the barcode on the disk sleeve. Not saying that the local post office uses it, but its there. And it would only work if the customer puts the sleeve back in the correct orientation.
My Netflix return envelopes have a window through which the barcode on the DVD sleeve is visible. (Assuming, of course, that you put it in the mailer correctly.) I can see where the Post Office would be able scan those without actually opening the mailers.
As far as I can tell, that window is so that Netflix’s machines can automatically address the envelope. In other words, a Netflix employee stuffs the film and sleeve into a blank envelope without knowing or caring who ordered it, and then a machine scans the barcode on the sleeve and addresses the envelope.
So if you put a DVD in the outgoing mail today, December 28, you’d receive an email message at 7pm today, December 28, saying that they’ve received that same DVD? I have no idea how that’s possible, but I’d be curious to find out.
Me too. The quickest I’ve done is getting a movie at 11 AM, putting it back in the mail about 1 PM, and getting the message they got it back the next day.
I no longer have Netflix, but my brother does and I order films for him.
What I wonder is where they are copying the DVD’s? I mean, they are usually not the original from the studio - so there has to be some dude, somewhere, frantically trying to make 386,000 copies of Sherlock Holmes starring Johnny Depp in the backroom, isn’t there?
And what do they do with the copies of the DVD’s after that first surge of popularity wears off? What are they doing with those extra 149,403 copies of Marmaduke? The sheer volume of trying to keep and store all those DVD’s must take additional warehouses, or do they just trash them?
You must be using a different Netflix. All my discs look like originals. Why do you think they are copies?
They sell them online. Or wholesale to distributors.
The bar code Netflix uses is not compatible with Post Office equipment. They were designed for two different purposes. Besides, Netflix doesn’t seem to care how you insert the disc, as their instructions don’t mention an orientation. I think the barcode that shows thru the window is used for outgoing, not incoming discs.
Maybe I am confusing them with Redbox, but the DVD’s were all silver with just a simple printing of the name of the DVD on the front - no artwork, cast listings, etc.
Of course he is. He’s getting movies from Netflix staring actors who weren’t in the original film! I knew NetFlix was run by wizards, I just knew it. I think I’m going to put The Matrix starring Clint Eastwood in my que, now