Reading the latest Martin ‘Money Saving Expert’ Lewis email last week it reminded me that Amazon do behind the scenes tours of their fulfilment centres, something that I’d had on my to do list for a while. Why was Lewis highlighting it? Because it is free to attend.
In the week between my booking and attending I received no less than five reminder emails – they clearly want to make sure you make good on your booking. These emails also set out the rules and regulations including a strict no photography clause which is why there aren’t any of the inside in this post. I am guessing that this rule is to ensure the privacy of the workers, the addresses of those receiving parcels and Amazon’s proprietary processes.
BRS2
I had chosen to go to the Swindon centre called BRS2. One of the first things you learn is that Amazon names their fulfilment centres after the nearest airport which, in this case, is Bristol, some 54 miles away. BRS1 is in Bristol.
BRS2 was opened in November 2021 and employs around 3,300 people many of whom works shifts so they are not all on at once. Some work ten hours a day, four days a week, others only four hours. It seems there’s a lot of variety available in shift patterns here. The guy running the tour spent quite a bit of time bigging up Amazon as an employer and pointed out that there is no performance related pay. He made no mention of toilet breaks being timed.
We were taken through a large area with lots of lockers for employees. At then end of each bank of lockers was a poster with messages such as “Show Loyalty”, “Get Better”, “Talk Straight” and “Extend Trust” which seemed to come straight out of 1984. From here it was out onto the working area.
BRS2 has four floors each which, we were told using the international unit of large areas, were the size of seven football pitches. I have trouble imagining how big a football pitch is not being a fan but the footprint of this place was pretty huge.
Six Step Process
Amazon has 35 fulfilment centres around the UK which hold goods for dispatch to local delivery hubs before being sent out to you. This one holds tens of millions of items up to the size of a microwave. Larger items, such as washing machines, are held at yet another, different type of warehouse.
BRS2 has a six step process for taking in items, storing them and then sending them out to customers. We were walked around the building in the order of the six steps.
Step one: goods are received and are placed in a black box about the size of a microwave. Every item must fit inside this black box which is barcoded.
Unsurprisingly much of the work in the warehouse is automated but there are a few places where there is human intervention. These are at the beginning, unpacking all the incoming items and at the end packing them back into boxes to be sent out.
My thought on this was “what a tedious job it must be standing there all day just taking things out or putting them into boxes”. Turns out that Amazon agrees as it has a way to counter this. Workers are allowed to step away from their job and play an online game for a while, we were shown “Dragon Duel” but there are apparently others. We weren’t told how long they are allowed to do this for.
Step two: The incoming items are then packed into tall cages which are manoeuvred around by robots. The cages are subdivided into about 40 smaller units.
Each robot can lift 537kg (about the weight of a grand piano) and BRS2 has three fleets of 1,000 of these robots. They are fully automated with sensors in them which allow them to be monitored. Routes are calculated in real time by AI and they follow a series of QR codes on the ground.
These robots will bring a cage to a workstation where an operative will put an item from one of the black boxes into the cage. Because the system knows the size and weight of the item it can work out where it is best to place it in the cage and highlights this to the operative by shining a light on the best unit. The operative also doesn’t need to tell the system where it has placed an item as this is worked out via cameras and AI.
Amazon use a method called “random stow” for their items which means in each unit in a cage you might find a hair brush along with a DVD and some fitness supplements. This storage method was apparently changed after the success of the Harry Potter books. Previously items were kept together but the Harry Potter books were so popular that it caused a bottleneck as everyone ordered it and there were so many operatives trying to pick copies at once.
Step three: you’ve hit the “Buy Now” button on your fitness supplements and now the process begins in reverse. A cage with your item is selected and driven by the robots to the edge of the storage area where it is picked by hand and put back into a black box. This is put onto a conveyor belt for the next step in its journey. Fun fact! There are 13 miles of conveyor belts in BRS2, mostly above head height.
Step four: the pack process is slightly different depending if you have ordered a single or multiple items but we were taken to a single packing station, I suspect most deliveries are for single items, and shown the process. A black box arrives with a number of items in it. The operative picks one and scans the barcode. The system then identifies the item and tells them which box or bag to use for the item. It also dispenses, “licks” (the tape glue is activated with water) and cuts any packing tape required. What is not done here is application of address labels to protect privacy – that is done in the next step.
Step five: SLAM – Scan Label, Apply Manifest. This is where the address label gets added and the process is entirely automated. A machine scans the barcode on the packaging used in the previous step to determine who it is for, weighs it, then prints a label and blows it down on to the package, badly in some cases from what I saw. The machine could handle boxes without any issue but those paper bags that Amazon use were much more problematic. Of the few I saw go through most had labels that weren’t attached correctly. The process is quick though with each package passing through in just a few short seconds.
Step six: Once labelled the conveyor whisks the packages away towards the shipping area here they are once again scanned and their destination checked. They are then automatically pushed off the conveyor into cages for various destinations. BRS2 mainly handles Swindon, Reading, Oxford and down to Southampton and Portsmouth. Not sure whether there is a different process for fragile items, I certainly hope so given the amount of flying through the air these packages do. It was fascinating to watch though.
Finally, these cages are packed into one of the many lorries waiting and then sent off to the local delivery hubs. The whole process from you buying to it coming out the door onto the lorry is about four hours. And the item most frequently ordered for same day delivery? Toilet paper!
