On Wednesday May 8, CSCMP's NY/NJ roundtable was fortunate enough to tour Amazon's EWR4 fulfillment center in Robbinsville, NJ. This facility is known as the "Beast of the East" with the highest volumes in the Amazon network.
We received a standard tour of the facility. Areas we saw were: 1. The Career Choice classroom + Introduction 2. Amazon Robotics 3. Stow 4. Inbound Receive 5. Pick 6. Orders 7. Pack 8. SLAM 9. Outbound shipping sorter 10. Outbound (as seen from the upper mezzanine)
One of my favorite things was to see Amazon's SLAM stations - Scan, Label, Apply & Manifest; innovation at its best.
SLAM – Totes are brought to workstation via conveyor. The operator scans and is prompted which box to use, tape and dunnage is automatically provided; the operator places the material in the box, as it’s displayed, seals the box, adds a barcode label for tracking and places it on the conveyor.
The Dematic system scans that label, validates the weight and either applies a Shipping label or Damage label for sortation, through incredibly high tech/high speed scanners along route (14 miles within the facility). WOW!!!
Our tour guide, Kate, was absolutely outstanding and went way above and beyond to support us, both before and after the tour. Our group is said to have received the longest briefing for a tour group - ever! Our CSCMP group asked a lot of great questions and Kate truly demonstrated her subject matter expertise and customer obsession, by answering every one as candidly as she could.
All in all, it was a fantastic day and an extremely enlightening experience that truly supports our mission to Connect, Develop, and Educate supply chain professionals.