One of the things we miss so much during COVID-19 is not being able to take you through
our fulfillment centers in person. We're still here and working hard to get your parcels delivered safely and we thought
we'd take this chance to bring the tour to you wherever you are so welcome. Welcome!
Welcome to SAT2. Bienvenue à Lauwin-Planque en France! Welcome to the Amazon Fulfillment Center Tour. We're really excited to be showing you
around our building. Hi everybody, my name is Paul and I'm going to be
your first tour guide of the day. Today we're in Rugeley. This building is one
of our Amazon fulfillment centers, or FCs for short. This building is 750,000 square feet or 10 football pitches
if you want a comparison. All of our buildings are named after the
nearest international airport. The nearest international airport
to this building is Birmingham. So this building
is called BHX1. And I think you'll agree, the view from where we are now is quite spectacular. This is Sarah, and Sarah's making one of our
famous boxes that turn up on your doorstep. Thank you, Sarah. This box has been on quite a journey.
Let's go and see where it all started. Let's go see Adam at Receive. This is where the whole process starts from. It's actually a combination of people, technology, and high-tech computer algorithms. Over half the items sold on the Amazon website by our small and medium sized businesses have done this by using Fulfilled by Amazon. Now this is where we will bring the items in, we'll pick the items, we'll pack the items, we'll ship them out and we'll even take care of the customer services for them. and more and more businesses taking this up each year. As the items make their way up the conveyor belt, one of our associates will take the items off and scan the barcode
that is on the items. Once we've done this, we will then place the item into a black tote. Once the item is inside the tote,
it goes back onto our conveyor belt, which lets us distribute the item
throughout the FC. And it will make its way to our Stowing area. So we're going to go upstairs,
and I'm going to pass you over to Toni. Now that we've received our items,
they're ready to stow. The way it works is that we scan our item's
barcode. We then check it for damages. We then pop it onto the shelf, and then
we scan the barcode of that shelf location. Once it's on there, we know exactly where
that item is at any time and we can immediately go to that
when we go into our next process. This method of stowing has been very successful.
However, over recent years we've developed something even more exciting. So let's
head over to our robotics site with Marta. Hi folks. My name is Marta,
and I'm here in Dunstable at one of our cutting edge Amazon Robotics fulfillment centers.
This building is what we call LTN4. Do you remember the naming system?
Perfect. The Amazon robots are activated once the associate
logs into their working station to perform his or her task. The robots are
bringing yellow shelves to our working stations where our associates can fill up pods
with more products or we can pick up your orders.
This is one of our shelving units. Our orange rectangular robots are going
underneath these pods and the lifting device is picking up
a shelf just a bit from the floor so it can be moved to our working station.
Let's see our stow station so I can show you how we are
filling up pods with the products. Our associates are asked to
assign containers to themselves. The next step is to pick up
an item from the container. Then we just have to scan this barcode and find a space in the shelving units for this product. Probably you're wondering if the system tells us where we should put this product. It's completely random -
we call it random stow method. That means that the most popular items
are spread across all the levels and not all in one place. After the process is completed, then we've got
a digital and physical match in our system and all these items are available on our website
for the customers. At Amazon, we are continuously looking for ways
to make improvements and this robotic arm is one of our newer
features. It's actually called a palletizer, and it helps us move
heavy totes around quickly and safely. Once you hit the 'Buy Now' button
on the Amazon website This is the beginning of our Outbound
operations processes. Once you order a product,
the information about the item will go to our system and then the
robots will be informed about which item you've ordered and where it is located. Then the robots
will pick up a pod and bring it to our working stations facing the correct side. And then it's quite easy.
All the information is on the screen Then we just have to pick up the item
from the shelf and put it to the correct container. In one container we can have products
ordered by several different customers. If you
would order, let's say, five items it's really rare that one picker only
will pick up all of your items. More likely, there will be picked up by
several different pickers. All the items you could find
in this building fit into our containers. We also sell bigger items such as kayaks or TVs even, and we
store them in our so-called non-sortable fulfillment centers. Once your products are picked up they will travel in a tote down to our multi pack area, where they
will be packed by our associates. And here we are in the Flow Room at LCY2.
This is where operations to my right are watching the workflow to make sure
everybody's delivery is leaving on time. To the left of me here are the engineers. These guys are watching
the conveyor belts. We have 16 miles in this building, and they're making sure
it's all working smoothly. This is Pack. This is where all of your items
end up after they've been picked, and they are going to come down the lines
and they'll be sorted into single pack and multiple pack Just behind me I have Sebi
packing on singles today, and he is putting one item inside each box. Everything that
they need is here, so all of their boxes their envelopes, and their tape is
always on this station or easily accessible and they do move around onto different
processes, as is required. So what he'll do is he will scan his item onto
the system, it will tell him exactly what size box he requires. We then
have the tape that is cut exactly to the size of that box,
so we do not waste anything. Once he's finished packing, it will then go
onto the line and then sent down to SLAM and then to shipping. Now that we've
finished packing our box and popped it onto the conveyor belt, it's now going to
come to what we call SLAM. SLAM stands for scan, label, apply, and
manifest. And this is where all of our parcels past through before going
down to shipping. This label is applied by a little bit
of air pressure and each of these parcels is going to be
scanned with a little white barcode that we applied at the pack station,
and each one of these barcodes is going to identify what's inside that box. Once
that's been scanned, it will then go through into the system automatically,
and it will tell the system which address label is required. Once these parcels
have continued through this part, it will get separated into large and small
boxes, and these will continue down to shipping. What's pretty cool about this machine
is that it can do this whole process without stopping the parcel, so
that label is applied straight away and it continues and generates within a
matter of seconds the next label. This is our final stop. This is shipping.
This is where all of our parcels end up. They're going to be sorted, and then
they'll be sent onto the trucks via pallets and ATS carts. As you can see behind me, we have some chutes. These are where our parcels are sorted and sent down the lines. So each one of these conveyor belts is a different distribution center and those workers behind me are going to
scan those parcels and send them off onto the correct pallet or ATS cart.
And then they will then be scanned in to the truck that needs to go to the area. Our trucks, they come throughout the day, they are given a time slot when they can come
into the back of the building and then they have a certain amount of times that
those parcels get onside that truck. Once it's loaded, they will then close
the truck and send it on its way. This is the last stop of our tour. Thank you
so much for coming around with us today. We hope you keep safe and we hope to
see you in person on one of our tours soon. Thanks for taking our tour today. It's been a pleasure to show you around.
