Amazon showed new Shakopee fulfillment facility where both robots and humans will be employed as workforce.
Amazon Inc. has established a massive shipment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, which will be operational in the coming months. According to sources, the massive fulfillment center located in Shakopee will have a huge team of 1,000 human employees along with ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of robots that will further assist humans with the daily tasks. This move is a part of the company’s ongoing operations to build its own shipping network in order to deliver the packages faster to the customers.
Amazon is coming up with a facility that spans over an area of 20 acres (approximately 1 million square feet). This place will become the 14th "robotics fulfillment facility” of the online retailer. The facility will cater to flattened orange machines that are responsible for merely fetching-related activities for the biological overlords.
The Minnesota fulfillment center will be the focal point for smaller items, such as DVDs and books. It further intends to speed up the shipping process of smaller items to the customers in numerous cities across the United States. Brian Urkiel, a supervisor in the facility, said, “The center enables us to deliver a higher amount of items, with faster delivery.”
Reports suggest that the Shakopee fulfillment facility was in construction since late past year. Amazon declined to comment further about the specifications regarding the initiation of operations in the center.
The Shakopee complex is a portion with four levels, which mainly is robot’s kingdom. Around 1,000 ‘human’ employees will assemble and work together. This fulfillment center will be operational on the same business model as others with both robots and humans. The robotic workforce will have a task to grab ‘pods’ which will contain consumer products ready to be shipped. These pods will be transferred to the humanoid workforce. Workers will have a more complex task such as picking, stowing, and counting procedures.
According to the company, each robot weighs nearly 320 pounds and has the ability to lift at least 750 pounds on its own. Robots will read the barcodes installed on the floor of the complex to find their position as they move around the place with their pods. Apart from the operations to begin, Amazon refused to give out the exact number of robots that will be deployed in the Minnesota fulfillment center.
Once the packages are picked and sorted, they will either be transferred to the nearest storing facility of Amazon or will be picked up by the shipping businesses, such as FedEx or UPS, to carry on with the delivery process. Regardless of the option, shipments will be dispatched through the dock doors.
Brian Urkiel added that the complex is “a marriage of the latest and greatest fulfillment technology and robotics technology.” Urkiel already has experience of running and operating a robotics fulfillment center in Kenosha, Wis.
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