[rjmill]

> I feel like Amazon must have solved this for all practical purposes.

Seeing how some of my recent orders have been packaged, I have my doubts.

But there definitely seems to be some algorithmic packing going on. Here's an example that piqued my curiosity:

I just received two bulk DnD miniature sets, a small 3-pack of wolf miniatures, and 2 packs of silicone rings. The miniatures and the rings were ordered in separate carts on different days, but arrived on the same day.

The bulk miniatures showed up in one package (not surprising), but the wolves and ONE of the ring packs were packaged together. The last ring pack came in its own package.

Clearly whatever their algorithm is, it's calibrated to avoid "overstuffing" packages. But why not group like things together? Why put the rings with the wolves?

If anyone has insight into why Amazon's algorithm would do this, I'd love to hear about it.

[crazygringo]

AFAIK, it's from different items coming from different Amazon warehouses, and nothing to do with "overstuffing".

In your case, one ring pack came from the same warehouse as the wolves, and was the last one. So the other one had to come from a different warehouse and so was packaged on its own.

Amazon tries to distribute its stock across all its warehouses so there's hopefully an item nearby for when you want one-day delivery. But with products that aren't super popular, there's often just one.

Note that if you delay shipping with Amazon Day or no-rush when available, your items are more likely to come in a single package, because that gives Amazon the time to send items from different warehouses to a single one and then package all in one place. This seems to be based on a complicated calculation of whether that will save Amazon money, so it doesn't always happen.