Amazon CEO admits to optimisation shortcomings after huge pandemic-fuelled capacity expansion

Today’s headline story: Amazon CEO admits to optimisation shortcomings after huge pandemic-fuelled capacity expansion

In a Q4 earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has admitted that the company needs to ramp up its optimisation efforts after dramatically doubling its capacity to meet consumer demand during the pandemic.

When asked during the call if and when Amazon would drive profitability in its North America segment, Jassy reportedly referred to how the company’s capacity had doubled within just two years:

“It’s important to remember that over the last few years, we’ve — we took a fulfillment center footprint that we’ve built over 25 years and doubled it in just a couple of years.”

Jassy then went on to talk about a similar expansion with regards to Amazon’s last mile transportation network, and admitted that there is a lot to do on the optimization front:

“And then we, at the same time, built out a transportation network for last mile roughly the size of UPS in a couple of years. And so when you do both of those things to meet the huge surge in demand, you’re going to — just to get those functional … it took everything we had. And so there’s a lot to figure out how to optimize and how to make more efficient and more productive,” said Jassy, according to the transcript of the earnings call.

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Call to action – Out of Home delivery in Europe 2023 report

The Last Mile Experts team, together with partner Analysys Mason, invite you to participate in a project aimed at presenting the latest information on European OOH networks – PUDO points and APMs.

The goal of the third edition of our Out of Home delivery in Europe report is to present data on the development of PUDO and APM networks supporting an environmentally friendly methods of last mile delivery. Since the first edition of our report in 2021, many European (EU & UK) carriers and operators have shared information with us about the number of PUDO and APM points.

However, there is a sizable group that has not provided us with data until now, and those we have presented have come from available press materials, interviews and website information. Every year there are also new networks that are just entering the OOH delivery business. So we invite everyone who has not yet submitted their data to participate (for free) in our project this year.

You can get more information and an simplified application form by writing to info@lmexpert.com. We are collecting data for the report up to and including February 17, 2023.

For those who have not yet had the opportunity to read the previous editions of the reports, you can do so here and become acquainted with its concept and what it strives to achieve. You can also find more information via Linkedin.

Thank you from Last Mile Experts and the Analysys Mason team.