Does video exist of inside the digikey warehouse?

[Psi]

Like the subject says.
Has anyone seen a video or documentary on the inner workings of digikey?

Apart from the conveyer belt pic below i have no idea how they work internally and it would be quite interesting to see how orders are processed.

Do they have robots that pick the needed bins of shelves for each order? etc.

[Uncle Vernon]

Like the subject says.
Has anyone seen a video or documentary on in inner workings of digikey?

Apart from the conveyer belt pic below

No video but there is the one still photograph.
 

[EEVblog]

I've always wanted to do a blog tour of the Digikey factory.
I've been invited to the Element 14 one here is Sydney, but never got around to it.
IIRC Chris got an open invite to visit, and I'd guess by extension, me too.
Slight problem of 14,000km or so...

Dave.

[mobbarley]

you should definitely check out the back of e14 some day!

[Psi]

I want to see a digikey employee picking a single 0402 resistor to fill an order

Who knows, maybe they have a huge number of pick and place reel feeders that can electronically cut off X resistors.

[EEVblog]

Turns out, I could be US west coast bound in April.
If Digikey want to fly me half away across the country and back, I'll happily shoot a tour 

Dave.

[Jon Chandler]

Going to bring a few extra suitcases to Apex this time Dave?

[ivan747]

Going to bring a few extra suitcases to Apex this time Dave?

He can bring them, but getting them out is a whole different problem.  Improvised electronic devices are suspicious. Maybe they think we can make a remote controlled bomb. It could connect to a modified laptop: add XBee or something with a decent range to an expansion card, then a receiver and a huge battery to explode on the suitcase. The US migration security should have someone who can differentiate a potentially harmful circuit from a normal one. That guy could also check for modified electronics and chemicals and drugs. You only have to learn electronics engineering and chemical science.

[harnon]

I took a box of electronic  bits in checked luggage from the UK to Aus and back again... nobody blinked an eyelid and it wasn't inspected.  I did have a bunch of charger/usb cables pulled out and inspected one by one in my checked luggage once, but that was flying into Oslo just after the bombing.

[tom66]

Here is a pic on Google Images, not sure how old it is or how accurate it is.

Looks like it is mostly hand picked...

[Psi]

Interesting, that's just a fraction of the size of the digikey building, so obviously a lot more goes on.
But as you say, that area is hand picked.

Containers come in on conveyer where they are remove,  filled with ordered items and placed back on the conveyer.
The container color maybe to signify if an order is now finished in that area of the building.
The downward facing camera visible on the conveyer line probably detects when a new container has been added or an existing container removed. It also probably can tell from the color which containers are done with that area on the factory.  So blue containers are looped around and around while red go to the next area which deals with other parts of the order.

And there's also quite a few smaller conveyers at 90deg to the main conveyer from the other side, perhaps a holding area, or the first stage in the whole order process where new containers join the main line.

[harnon]

Far more likely that the "cameras" are barcode readers. Changing crates to signify if a job is picked is potentially very ugly... Pick accuracy would be very poor and it would be time consuming.

Perhaps the scanner reads the paperwork, and if there is something to pick near this station it stops the crate, otherwise it keeps going. That would prevent pickers walking all over the warehouse to find a particular resistor keeping travel time low and pick rates up. Of course that may be rubbish!

Sometimes on manual pick stations they use cameras to detect when an item has been put into a tote and then they can double check the weight, but I don't think this is the case here as the camera is before the pick station and the parts can be very light!

[M. András]

it would be a candy store whoever gets in there and could take anything what he could carry with his hands

[Psi]

Far more likely that the "cameras" are barcode readers.

Wouldn't reading a barcode over that distance be equally has hard. If it was printed on some bit of paper left in the tray it wouldnt be very reliable.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I took a box of electronic  bits in checked luggage from the UK to Aus and back again... nobody blinked an eyelid and it wasn't inspected.  I did have a bunch of charger/usb cables pulled out and inspected one by one in my checked luggage once, but that was flying into Oslo just after the bombing.

I've often taken all sorts of electronic prototype stuff in carry-on (not to US though), and not even had them open the bag - I think current x-ray machines are pretty good at discriminating explosives etc.

[slateraptor]

it would be a candy store whoever gets in there and could take anything what he could carry with his hands

I'll take a half dozen of these guys, thank you very much.

[Rerouter]

why a half dozen, bring in the suitcase

not to say i wouldnt even know where to begin using the capability of such an fpga, that thing is just... alot,

[EEVblog]

it would be a candy store whoever gets in there and could take anything what he could carry with his hands

Imagine the person packing that if they knew the price - "This things costs half what I earn in a year? - the world is TFU!"

Dave.

[Psi]

it would be a candy store whoever gets in there and could take anything what he could carry with his hands

I'll take a half dozen of these guys, thank you very much.

i'd rather have this, it's more expensive and much more useful.
http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/MSO%20104XS-B/MSO%20104XS-B-ND/2796165

[ndictu]

Wouldn't reading a barcode over that distance be equally has hard. If it was printed on some bit of paper left in the tray it wouldnt be very reliable.

Standard EAN barcode? Yes. Something like QR code? No problem. It can be easily found in picture even when distorted, parts can be torn out, obscured by dirt, etc thanks to a good error correction. I've written a qr code scanner few years back, as long it had about 1 qr code pixel to 1 camera pixel resolution ratio it worked perfectly, and that is not that hard to achieve.

[slateraptor]

why a half dozen, bring in the suitcase

Well, they only have a half dozen in stock. I know we're playing make believe fantasy and all, but I'm making a conscious effort to keep it real.

Imagine the person packing that if they knew the price - "This things costs half what I earn in a year? - the world is TFU!"

Dave.

...or worse yet, if packers were actually held liable for ESD damage.

i'd rather have this, it's more expensive and much more useful.
http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/MSO%20104XS-B/MSO%20104XS-B-ND/2796165

Yeah, but you can only walk out with 2. If I sell 2 FPGAs at a reasonable half price, I can have my cake, experiment with frosting a bit, and still eat it too.

[Psi]

i'd rather have this, it's more expensive and much more useful.
http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/MSO%20104XS-B/MSO%20104XS-B-ND/2796165

Yeah, but you can only walk out with 2. If I sell 2 FPGAs at a reasonable half price, I can have my cake, experiment with frosting a bit, and still eat it too.

Selling $20k FPGAs would be pretty hard.
Anyone who needs that sort of IC isn't going to be looking for them on ebay.
And an ebay auction would either look "too cheap to be real" or "too expensive to be worth the risk"

[slateraptor]

Selling $20k FPGAs would be pretty hard.
Anyone who needs that sort of IC isn't going to be looking for them on ebay.
And an ebay auction would either look "too cheap to be real" or "too expensive to be worth the risk"

In my fantasy world, US$20k FPGAs sell like hot cakes. ...and while we're at it, I'm imagining eBay is backed by FDIC with a 100% money back guarantee.

[Psi]

heh, $20,000 ebay dispute claim over a lump of black plastic.

That would be an interesting conversation.

i can imagine the ebay employee looking at the item and saying
 "unbelievable that this little piece of junk could be such a big problem"

[M. András]

it would be a candy store whoever gets in there and could take anything what he could carry with his hands

I'll take a half dozen of these guys, thank you very much.

these would be some small "diamonds" cos i couldnt use them if i wanted to, i never learned programming so these microprocessors are out of my reach