What It's Like Inside One Of Amazon's Massive Warehouses
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Aug 18, 2017, 12:37 IST
Amazon calls its warehouses "fulfillment centers" or FC's. It also has sortation centers, where prepped packages are sorted before being shipped to individual post offices.
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Amazon's "Peak Season" happens around the holidays.
Most warehouse employees are hired through a contractor, not by Amazon itself. This year, the company hired 80,000 seasonal workers for its sortation and fulfillment centers.
Working in an Amazon warehouse is, as you'd expect, very physical work. Employees need to be able to lift 49 pounds and stand / walk for 10-12 hours per day.
To enter and exit each day, employees pass through metal detectors. In a recent lawsuit, workers in a Las Vegas warehouse said the security screening at the end of the day can take as long as 25 minutes. Amazon contests that postshift security takes "little or no wait."
Products aren't organized by type. Instead, identical products are scattered throughout the warehouse, to minimize the distance workers will have to walk to find what they need.
Each time someone orders something on Amazon, that order will get pinged onto an employee's handheld scanner or "pick mod." It will direct them to the areas where each item is located. Employees scan the item, place it in a tote, scan the tote, and then send it on a conveyor belt for shipping prep.
Generally, software plays a huge role in the fulfillment centers. Anything that can get optimized or automated by an algorithm, is. "An Amazon fulfillment center is like a giant robot," according to Wired.
Some employees have said that Amazon tracks their every step throughout the fulfillment center and will put them on alert if they're not as productive as their counterparts.
A few years ago, a source told us about some of the strict rules at fulfillment, like that employees aren't allowed to wear lipstick, and they can only drink water from clear bottles so floor supervisors can tell what the liquid is.