Dr. Russell Allgor moved from Bayer Chemical to Amazon and built an 800,000-equation computer model of the company’s sprawling operation. When implemented, the
goal of the model was to help accomplish almost everything from scheduling Christmas
overtime to rerouting trucks in a snowstorm. Allgor’s preliminary work focused on one of
Amazon’s most vexing problems: How to keep inventory at a minimum, while ensuring that
when someone orders several products, they can be shipped in a single box, preferably from
the warehouse — the company had six — that is nearest the customer [Hansell, 2001]. Dr.
Allgor’s analysis is simple, but heretical to Amazon veterans. Amazon should increase its
holdings of best sellers and stop holding slow-selling titles. It would still sell these titles but
order them after the customer does. Lyn Blake, a vice president who previously ran Ama-zon’s book department and now oversees company relations with manufacturers, disagrees
with this perspective. “I worry about the customer’s perspective if we suddenly have a lot of
items that are not available for quick delivery.”