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Originally Posted by Spexxvet
That would be inefficient. Most distribution centers have the most commonly picked items in the place where it takes the least time and effort to pick. For example the most popular item in the place will be first row, on the aisle, waist high.
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According them, it has improved efficiency. Because it's not just about picking the items, it's about stocking them in the first place. If you're low on shampoo, you have a ton of wasted shelf space in the "shampoo" section, multiply that by a hundred thousand products and your warehouse has to be much larger to accommodate your standard holding. If you have extra shampoo, every single thing on the rest of that aisle has to be shifted down to make space for it.
Meanwhile, the picking really isn't being done by humans at all. You get on your Segway-equivalent, scan the barcode of the first item that's been printed on the packing slip. Segway tells you "That's section 42, aisle 8, shelf C" and drives you there. You grab it, get back on, and scan the next item. Meanwhile your computer already knows that was the last widget in that crate, and marks that pallet slot as empty for the next delivery of who-cares-what. Amazon sells too much of too many things for there to be "commonly picked" items in any meaningful sense of the word.