Patent ID: 8175925

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a plurality of items at a materials handling facility, wherein the materials handling facility comprises one or more buildings in which items are stored in a plurality of inventory areas, and wherein items picked from the inventory areas are shipped from the one or more buildings to different destination locations to fulfill orders for the items; for each of the plurality of items: storing the item in a respective one of the plurality of inventory areas in the materials handling facility, wherein storing the item comprises placing the item at a particular position within the inventory area according to one or more positional placement guidelines that describe how items should be placed in the inventory area relative to other items in the same inventory area; and using a computer to perform storing a respective position indicator in association with an identifier of the item in a database; in response to receiving an order for one or more of the plurality of items, wherein the order identifies each of the one or more ordered items: accessing the database to determine the respective position indicator that is stored in association with an identifier of a given one of the one or more ordered items; determining position information describing the particular position at which the given one of the one or more ordered items is stored in terms of a relationship between the particular position at which the given item is stored and a position of at least one other item in the same inventory area as the given item, wherein said determining is dependent on the determined position indicator; and displaying, on a communication device, instructions visible to an agent inside the materials handling facility that are usable by the agent to locate the given one of the one or more ordered items to be picked from a given inventory area in the materials handling facility, wherein the given inventory area stores a plurality of dissimilar items, and wherein the displayed instructions comprise the position information.