STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — Robots powered by artificial intelligence work around the clock in the 2.5 million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Stone Mountain.
Channel 2’s Jorge Estevez walked the floor with the facility’s senior operations manager, Steve Robinson.
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The roar of 20 miles of conveyor belts and robots powered by artificial intelligence fill the building.
“How do these things help the process and not replace the people?” Estevez asked Robinson.
“When we take our Amazon intelligence and combine that with the talents of our people, it frees our people up to do some higher-level activities,” Robinson replied.
He told Estevez an army of totes is key to the operation, because they take the variation out of the system.
He said everything the center moves must fit in a tote.
“This building would not sell items that are bigger than 18 inches, roughly 18 inches long,” he said.
The first stop for any item sold is the decant area where an employee sorts and places it in a tote. So once it’s in the yellow tote, it can now be transported through the rest of our standardized system,” Robinson said.
From there, the inventory heads to the stow area where it is scanned.
Once employees scan the items, the computer tells them which bin to put it in.
“Once she puts it in the pod, the system keeps track of where it was placed,” he explained.
Robots do the heavy lifting, carrying 300-pound shelving units to the next stop, the picking station where employees fill orders.
“Sure, you’re keeping people from doing repetitive work and all that, but it’s also keeping people from having that job, no?” Estevez asked.
“I’d rather give someone an opportunity to use a higher-level skill,” Robinson said.
The average salary is $19 an hour with increases every six months. Initial training takes two days, with continued education for various levels of work.
Employees are trained to do almost every job to prevent repetitive work.
After employees scan items, the computer prints a label and picks the right size box, they stuff it with packing paper and AI comes in again.
“It will even dispense just the right amount of tape for that size box,” Robinson said.
The final stop for items is the slam farm, which directs packages down the shoot to begin the journey to the customer’s door.
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