Back story

A few years ago Amazon was having some public relations challenges with their fulfillment centers. Probably as a way to correct the perception of those fulfillment centers, Amazon started offering fulfillment facility tours to the public. You can find tour information here.

While trying to find the visitor parking area, I took this panoramic to give some scale to the size of the operation.

Map Reference

Tour Time

I entered the RIC2 Fulfillment Center approximately 30 minutes before the tour. A couple things strike when entering the lobby. The first is the massive turnstiles that only allow those with valid ID to pass through into the security scan area. It’s clear that only valid people are getting in through this lobby. The second is the sound in the facility. A few conveyors can be seen moving yellow bins along in the distance. My iPhone microphone was picking up around 90dB in the lobby. Finally, while standing outside those massive turnstiles, I realized that there were 10 - 15 other individuals waiting in the lobby but were not looking for a tour. I later learned that these individuals were nervously waiting for on-site interviews.

Eventually all the tour members arrived, mostly parents and kids, our tour guides, Linda and Ryan, ushered us into an adjoining room where the noise was much more muted and they were able to give us facts and figures of the RIC2 building and were able to answer questions. We also had our ID checked and receive a visitor badge for our site tour.

Facts and Figures

The RIC2 building opened approximately 6 years ago. The facility covers ‘traditional sortable’ items. Generally covering smaller items that do not need equipment to move and items that can be stored for some time on a shelf. For example, the facility would not contain a big screen TV and would not move perishable food items.

Physically, the building is split into two mirror images. The entire site covers approximately 1.2 million Square Feet. The facility is open 22hrs per day with team members working in two 10 hour shifts.

Team members typically work 4 days of 10 hours per day per week. The starting wage is $15 per hour.

Process Highlights

I don’t think I can cover the entire process flow of the facility, but I’ll comment on a couple distinctive pieces that I saw in my brief visit.

Pick and pull

There is a three story area what I think they called the ‘Pick Bins’. There are aisle of shelves where each shelf is divided into bins. Each bin is approximately 2-3 feet high, wide and perhaps deep. Each bin has a bar-coded address at the bottom of the bin.

When items are received into the facility, team members will distribute the items out into the pick bins. Items are placed into bins generally randomly. Each item that is placed in a bin is also scanned with the bar-code of the bin where it was placed. The bin may contain many other random items. I mean random in that there is no implied relationship between the items that inhabit the same shelf. I saw bins containing, books, Cocoa dusted almonds, electronics, etc. Each item is individually packaged.

When an order for products comes in, team members will be give a list of bins in a defined order to retrieve the items that fulfill some part of the order. It is possible that more than one team member may be simultaneously filling other parts of the same order in a different area of the pick bins.

As items are collected by the team member they are placed in a yellow (at least they were yellow bins in this facility..) bin. When the team member has collected their designated items, the bin is placed on a conveyor and the bin is moved to a merge location where multiple parts of the order are merged together. (Unfortunately, we did not get to see this process.)

This method of random placement and is a huge optimization on collecting. Items can be stowed without extra time to keep them organized. Items just need to be associated with a location. The pull times are also optimized. Matching an order up to the items on shelve can be planned out to be the shortest path for the team member pulling the order together. It’s amazing that Amazon puts this on full display on the tour. It’s incredibly efficient.

Kanban outbound

The other part of the tour that I found interesting was the packaging and Quality Assurance (QA) step right before an order is loaded onto a truck.

An order is collected up and packaged by a team member then it is placed on a conveyor. A bar-code on the exterior is used to identify the contents of the box, however this is not the shipping label that is needed for postage delivery. The package moves along a a conveyor and enters a QA check. The bar-code is scanned and the package travels over a scale to measure the weight of the box and contents.

If the weight of the box(s) are consistent with the calculated weight of the items ordered then the box moves through to an area with over hanging label printers. As the box travels under the label printers, a plunger or arm extends down to the box affixing the label.

If the weight of the box is not consistent with the calculated weight of the items ordered, then the box is ejected out a side chute where it can be investigated.

Queue Hustle

While Linda was describing these steps, the conveyor at QA nearest to us stopped. As I looked around, all QA conveyors I could see were in a similar state. There was a light tower at the end of each and the top indicator was red. There was a little scramble and some radio communication exchanges we could hear and Ryan, our other tour guide translated the radio chatter as a jam downstream.

The jam caused the upstream process, in this case QA, to stop. Stopping the up-steam when the downstream is full (or in this case jammed) is a key control characteristic of Kanban scheduling.

While the QA steps are stopped, boxes will continue to accumulate at the upstream step.

When the jam is cleared and the process starts up again, all the queued boxes will flow through the QA step normally, although at an increased volume for some time.

The reaction of people in the area when the QA step stopped was interesting. No big panic, but there appeared to be an attention to detail that I respect. As orders started accumulating upstream of the QA step, there were team members pulling boxes to one side of the conveyor – I assume to make room for additional boxes that may accumulate in the upstream queue while the issue is being addressed downstream.

It also makes it clear to me why they have three label printers across the conveyor width after the QA step. As boxes accumulated upstream, and the QA step clears, they will move through QA 1, 2 or 3 at a time. If there are 2-3 boxes moving in parallel, then each could receive a printed label as it passed under the label printer either in the left, middle or right position on the conveyor.

Changes since my last visit

I’m not sure if it wasn’t called out on my previous tour a few years ago or it is a new process, but I did see that there was a second line of packaging for bubble wrap packages. I did not remember seeing that last time. Our tour guide mentioned that unlike boxes, the bubble mailer items were sorted into containers that were destined for different distribution facilities rather than being loaded like boxes.

Traditional vs. Automated?

I’ve been following Amazon for quite some time. 6 Years ago Amazon bought a robot company called Kiva systems – now Amazon Robotics. Kiva Systems developed a robot that would travel across a factory floor following a bar-code path. The robots could travel under vertical shelving and then lift a shelve unit up. It could then travel with the shelving some distance. Hard to explain… Here’s a video.

After having worked in automated material movement (AMHS) in Semiconductors, I would love to see what could be done with these or similar robots. Here is some stock video of AMHS in a FAB environement.

Summary

I enjoyed my trip to the Richmond, Va area to visit the RIC2 building. It was educational and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Operations, Operational Improvement, Manufacturing, or Supply Chain to take advantage of the tour. It was short and informative and free.

My next goal is to find the nearest automated site with these robots and tour there. I really want to see the differences between the conveyor model and the autonomous robot model.