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 compan

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.