Have you ever wondered what happens between ordering an item on Amazon and it arriving at your door?
We took a behind-the-scenes look at the massive fulfilment centre in Dunfermline as the workforce of more than 2,000 staff prepare for Black Friday.
It is once more set to be one of the busiest days in the shopping calendar.
The Fife base is Amazon’s third largest in the UK and covers an area the size of 17 football pitches.
Inside, thousands of staff members are hard at work, negotiating the endless rows of towering shelves that cover the 1.5 million sq ft site.
The process involved in ensuring each product is delivered on time and in perfect condition is mind-boggling.
How does Amazon work?
From the moment any one of the 250 million items that Amazon sells arrives at the centre, they are stored in huge racking across four floors.
At a first glance, the products appear to be stored at random – with no sections for certain items.
There is order to it, though. Scanners show the pickers where they need to collect items for, with the rows colour coded.
When an order comes in, the product is picked by one of the team and sent via conveyor belts to packers.
The orders are then collated. The technology is so sophisticated that if you make two Amazon orders at different points in a day they can arrive together to cut down on packaging.
Technology again plays its part, helping staff to select the right sized box for any order, while systematic checks are carried out.
One of those checks is on the weight of an item, ensuring orders are correct before being sent out.
Once the package has been picked and packed, it’s sent down one of 20 giant yellow spiral tubes to be shipped.
But it is not all technology.
Getting parcels off the huge shelves in the fulfilment centre into packaging and out into delivery lorries requires a huge amount of manual labour.
As many as 190 lorries leave the Dunfermline site on a busy day.
Busiest time of year for Amazon’s Fife site
Every day between now and Christmas, tens of thousands of items will pass through Dunfermline and make their way across the UK and further afield.
Amazon has a full-time workforce of 1,200 in Dunfermline.
An extra 1,000 part-time employees are required over the festive period, such is the spike in demand.
Jamie Strain is general manager of the Dunfermline site, which first opened its doors just over a decade ago.
He expects this to be another busy period.
“We’ll be shipping hundreds of thousands of items over the next few weeks. Customers can take advantage of the great deals.
“It’s a really busy time of the year. Our volumes overall have been comparable to last year.”
Adapting to Covid and dealing with Brexit
Strict Covid-19 protocols – face masks, social distancing and screens – are still in place.
Amazon is still offering staff a PCR test, with results returned from its purpose-built testing lab in Manchester within 24 hours.
Mr Strain said the business had learned to adapt over the course of the pandemic.
“We learned a lot last year and we have the same protocols in place on site.
“Our operation has adapted very well.
“We’ve been able to fulfil orders to our customers right across the UK while deploying those Covid measures.”
Businesses across the country have felt the impact of Brexit this year, with supply chain issues and problems recruiting.
Mr Strain, though, said Amazon had escaped those problems.
“It has had very little impact,” he said.
“We’re very much focused on shipping items across the UK from this building.”
