Reflections from Visiting an Amazon Fulfillment Center

In October I visited the Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Tilbury, London; the company’s largest such facility in Europe. The center receives packages from suppliers and third-party sellers on the site and packs them in the eponymous boxes before sending them to their distribution centers. I was there in a private capacity with members of my family. Amazon packages arrive at our home once or twice a week and we wanted to understand what happens behind the scenes when we place an order. The following is a write up of our time in the facility but also my perspectives as an analyst covering smart warehousing.

First, some numbers; the Tilbury facility covers 2.2 million square feet (or, to use a more common unit of measuring, 28 soccer fields) and contains 16 miles of conveyor belts connecting with 360 work stations. There are 1,500 staff members throughout the year and up to five thousand at peak times; there is an office for temporary staff provider Adecco on site. The facility has 38 lorry bays with goods being received from suppliers and shipped out to the distribution centers; individual items can be processed in under an hour and high demand items in as little as 15 minutes. Staff undergo four days of training before they handle customer orders.

At the first type of workstation, pictured above, crates come off the conveyor belt and staff scan the items within with a bar code reader to verify that the items are the correct items and identify the correct color-coded amount of packing space they will require. The robots (supplied currently by Amazon Robotics and formerly by Kiva Systems, which the firm acquired in 2012) carry shelving units and staff scan the items and place them in a space allocated for the appropriate pack size. The robots weigh over 300 pounds and can carry up to 2.2 tons. The items on the robots are randomized so that any workstation can process and pack any item.

Unlike other warehousing facilities, the pickers here stay at their workstations with the robots delivering the items to them. The color coding accelerates the identification process. Individual orders are placed in crates and passed on to the packers. The packers’ screens tell them which of the 16 types of boxes an order should be dispatched in; our tour guide admitted that mistakes are often made at this stage, which explains why items are sometimes delivered in oversized boxes. At no time do pickers or packers have knowledge of customers’ details. Customer delivery labels are added automatically, and the box is added to the delivery pallet.

All the operations are controlled from a bank of 16 screens in the heart of the facility. Team leaders use Amazon Fire Tablets to keep on top of activities in their section.

There were several themes throughout the 75-minute tour: safety, productivity, customer privacy, and career progression for the employees:

Safety: As soon as you enter the facility, a sign greets you indicating how many days have transpired since the last workplace accident; when we visited it had been 30 days. It is not clear what constitutes an accident. Throughout the facility, emergency stop buttons are frequent and visible. When walking around the facility staff must stay within two blue lines and are kept away from the robots. The robots are caged in and only designated staff, signified by the type of high-visibility jacket they wear, are permitted to enter these areas. The robots come to a complete stop if a member of staff comes within two meters of them or an object blocks their path.

Productivity: Having Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) move around the facility taking items to workstations means that staff are picking and packing instead of walking several miles a day to find items. Deploying Augmented Reality (AR) glasses at workstations would improve productivity that is slowed down by having staff scan items with bar code readers and check details on screens.

There are a thousand robots operating in the Tilbury facility. The robots use less space than shelving racks because they can be condensed together if they are not required. The robots go to be recharged when battery levels fall below ten percent and are expected to travel thirty thousand miles during their lifetimes. The benefit of randomizing the items carried by the robots (rather than having particular robots carry particular items) is apparent when there is a rush on a particular item, as multiple robots can transport items to workstations across the facility for processing.

I agree with the contention that the flexibility offered by deploying robots increases the number of workstations the facility can house and, ergo, increases the number of people employed. I didn’t notice any signs imploring staff to increase their productivity, but the guide suggested that Amazon hires more temporary staff rather than continuously trying to get incremental productivity gains from existing employees.

Customer Privacy: Amazon operates its robots via a Wi-Fi network with the units navigating via QR codes in the floor. Initially I was surprised that there wasn’t a private wireless network, but on reflection I think that one reason why is because the customer information is only added at the final stage before being dispatched.

Career Progression: Working in such a facility is not a dead-end job like I had assumed. Staff work four consecutive days consecutively and initially earn £10.50 pounds per hour; as expected there are notices about earning extra with more shifts and workers can increase their wage levels by becoming team leaders. The staff have other opportunities to increase their earnings by exploring other career opportunities as well; “have you considered a career as web developer?” read one sign. After two years, staff can work toward an apprenticeship or an open university course, furthering their career within Amazon or elsewhere.

The day shift starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 6:00 p.m., with staff having 30-minute breaks every three hours. One big surprise was that the whole staff takes their break at the same time; the conveyor belts across the entire facility come to a halt. It is striking that, in such an automated facility, the whole operation stops for meal breaks.