The future of Amazon is revealed with the opening of Boxwood

NEWPORT – Amazon’s crown jewel Boxwood has finally started operations with state-of-the-art robotics for warehousing and streamlining the shipping process.

The e-commerce juggernaut began receiving thousands of items for inventory on September 12, sorting each item with the help of 500 workers and 40,000 robots in the five-story building. Amazon wants to hire at least 500 more employees by the end of the year and scores with the last mile delivery center on the same campus.

“One of the incredible things about Amazon’s robotic system is the resources it saves. Our employees can stay in one place instead of walking around the building and around the corner, ”said Will Carney, general manager of the Boxwood plant. “I know this team that we have now is really committed to making every person who comes to us feel engaged and wanting to come back every day and ultimately have a safe, fun and enjoyable experience here.”

Over the past two years, Amazon and Dermody Properties have laid the foundation stone for a building with 15 tons of steel and 3.7 million square feet of floor space. The next generation facility is one of at least 26 locations where small robots are used to store products and guide them to employees for picking, packaging and shipping.

When products arrive in cartons at the Amazon Boxwood plant, employees take the product out of the box and place it on a yellow tote bin, which is then placed on the roughly ten miles of conveyor belts that zigzag through the building Willy Wonka-like maze.

These conveyor belts take the containers to the top floors, where they are removed by other employees and loaded onto shelves – each containing a storage tray – stacked on small, flat robots. Like a Roomba on steroids, these robots carry the storage bins across the warehouse floor for storage or come to a worker to pick specific inventory required to fulfill an order. Each floor has about 10,000 robots. Barcodes stuck on the floor help the robots navigate without colliding with another robot.

“This is probably the coolest part of running here,” said Jairaj Vora, Amazon Boxwood’s assistant general manager, as he watched the shelves slide smoothly across the warehouse floor. “It is also extremely safe because the capsules come to our employees. These barcodes work like avenues and streets in New York City, they keep the traffic going. “

It can take two hours or more from a customer to place an order on Amazon.com until the robot is triggered, depending on the other items in the digital shopping cart and the size of the items. No floor or pods are assigned specific products because it works best to randomize storage due to unpredictable customer orders.

At the edges of the warehouse floors are stations where workers pack the boxes. Another machine can detect a hand and the weight of the box during the process. A total of 128 stations are to be occupied by employees.

The employees stay at the stations while the Kiva robots deliver the storage units for order picking, storage or inventory checking. | DBT PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS

with the hope of bringing the system to almost 24-hour operation.

“When you think back to the first fulfillment center, stevedores and order pickers walked 32 km a day and had to look for inventory. Machine learning eliminates the need for scanning and makes it safe, ”said Vora.

Amazon’s next-generation Boxwood plant, which rises above Route 141, breathes life into a location that has long symbolized Delaware’s past as an automobile manufacturing state. The former General Motors plant closed in 2009 after six decades of Chevrolet production and stood empty until it was razed 10 years later.

Amazon and Dermody invested around $ 250 million to build the site, and Delaware has pledged $ 3 million in taxable incentives to seal the deal.

The e-commerce giant also made a point of highlighting health and safety measures and culture at the newest facility. Amazon announced $ 3 billion in investments in workplace safety, including $ 100 million this year for projects such as workplace redesign and retrofitting, cross-dock operations redesign and powered truck barriers, as well as the Implementation of new security control systems.

The Amazon Boxwood plant has break rooms on each floor and an infirmary on the first floor manned by EMT-certified staff. According to Vora, COVID-19 tests can also be provided.

Entry-level users are currently hired on a basis of $ 16 an hour with full medical and dental benefits, and Amazon is currently offering a $ 3,000 sign-up bonus for those who stay for at least six months. The company recently announced that it will invest $ 1.2 billion in education and development programs for its employees over the next three years. This includes college tuition, GED and high school degrees, English as a second language, and in-house training – like maintaining the robots themselves.

While Amazon plays a huge role in Delaware, contributing up to $ 3 billion to the state’s gross domestic product and providing more than 5,000 direct jobs, it still pales in comparison to its statewide impact. The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled the need for shipping and delivery services and brought Amazon to a meteoric rise.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it would be discontinuing 165,000 more people, including 40,000 corporate and technology jobs. While the Amazon Boxwood facility may be Delaware’s largest building, it will only contribute a fraction of a percent.